Bringing Truespeed to Saltford Village

It's been 8 months since we went live with Truespeed in Saltford and the best thing I can say about it in our home is it's allowed me to forget about broadband.  That's just how it should be.  It should just be there when you need it.  Here's a little example; I am helping a friend out setting up a new PC.  He's a prolific email user.  Last night I downloaded 30Gb of email files I didn't even notice it. There was no impact on our network whatsoever. What's been happening with Saltford Truespeed then?  After finishing the North East side of the village apart from a few old "condemned" BT Poles, Truespeed has signed off two more segments of the village.  The South East and North West sides are being built right now (May 2021) with the South East being ready for Service within the next month or two. The local Community is always important to Truespeed.  In Saltford, they have committed to providing a free for life service to Saltford Primary Sch...

Truespeed has announced today that they are going ahead with the next two phases building fibre to the home broadband in Saltford village.  This covers the South East side and the North West side of the village leaving only the South West to follow, hopefully not too far behind. They have told me the budget has been approved, but they will need some who have registered an interest to convert to firm orders before they build.  Of course, this is good news, but they remain a "sell and then build" business and not a "build and then sell".  This means they get enough people to sign up to justify the cost of building the network before they start. It's sometimes frustrating for customers to wait, but it makes business sense.  They are not a huge global business who can absorb a few mistakes along the way, and Saltford is a very brave project for Truespeed.  Previously, they have focussed on rural villages who typically have extremely poor broadband speeds. If yo...

Now I've got Truespeed, what's it like?  A year ago I placed my order with Truespeed and at the same time started to "champion" their investment in the village. This involves spreading awareness of the technology and what it means to the user. It's not for all but if you value fast and consistent broadband it's the best there is. It's taken two years in total from when Truespeed first talked about investing in Saltford to the point of getting installed, set up and running.  Some in the village were lucky and got online three months sooner however the BT Pole close to my house was "defective" and so we had to dig up the drive and use ducting.  Some still don't have access.  Some landowners are preventing installation which to me is incredibly short sighted. Of course, in the middle of this project we had the small issue of a global pandemic but  Truespeed  carried on as best they could.  It obviously caused some delays.  Telecoms counts as cri...

Why I'm a big supporter of Truespeed This is a tricky one. I get accused of being employed by or of the payroll of Trespeed and it pi**es me off. Firstly, I have run my own technology businesses since 1994 and in that time I've created a lot of jobs and opportunities for others. I have lived through dial-up modems, and I recall the first X.400 email service I paid for used to charge me per character or text I use. We used to abbreviate to save money. I remember signing a check for £400 in one month just for email and we would be dealing with less than 100 emails a month. Stamps would have been cheaper. I have also been a buyer of Networks for a major bank and also for a travel business where 9.6kb/s leased lines would cost £30k per annum. When I was a buyer, I had to negotiate with a near monopoly which was not fun. So it's true to say I am not a big fan of all things BT. I have also been a customer of Virgin for 15 years and I have had similar dealing with them. Constant s...

UK 47th in World Broadband Speed According to THIS  2020 research the UK has dropped to 47th in the world ranking of broadband speed tests. Here are a few examples of countries who have faster average broadband speeds than the UK; Latvia ,  Lithuania ,  Romania ,  Slovenia with  Aland Islands ,  Hungary and  Aruba more than doubling the UK's average speed! Now, I know I have written before that it is not all about speed.  Stability and network quality are arguably more important but there's the thing; Our Broadband duopoly is not fit for purpose. We essentially have two dominant providers - BT (Openreach) and Virgin Media.  BT Openreach provides the wholesale market on which most broadband providers sit and so the speed is held back by their investment policies. The be fair to Virgin they probably skew that average as their Docsis (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) technology already delive...

How long does it take to get Truespeed? This is a very common question but there is no simple answer.  If Truespeed is already in your village then it could be a week or two but for this Blog, I'm going to assume you are starting from scratch.  It can be a very long process but there are things you can do. Sell to Build vs. Build to Sell Firstly you need to understand that  Truespeed currently is a Sell to Build business.  What does that mean? It means  Truespeed look at a village or town, work out if they can get their core network there and then start to sell.  They typically need 30% of homes to place an order although this can be less if the cost of installation is less than average. Once they have enough commitment they will plan a detailed build, produce a business case and then decide if and when they will go ahead. Larger ISP's don't do that, so why? The answer is in the question.  Truespeed is not a large ISP.  True they a...