Saltford Last Phase - 2022

Saltford Village - last phase(s)

When Truespeed planned Saltford it was at that stage quite a large project.  Truespeed had concentrated on smaller more rural areas.  Although Saltford has both BT Openreach ADSL2+ (this includes Sky, PlusNet, Zen, Vodafone etc.) and also Virgin some parts of the village had awful service.  In the older parts the old BT cables are often post war aluminium cables and so even homes close to the Exchange in Norman Road had speeds of around 1Mb/s even if they were paying for 74Mb/s.

Even in the more moden North of the A4 parts the wiring is old and poorly maintained.  Saltford Parish Council wrote to both Virgin and BT Openreach to ask when updates they had planned and BT said, none, whilst Virgin didn't respond.

Truespeed's investment is a good thing even if you don't use them.  Firstly, they reduce the over-loaded systems from BT Openreach and Virgin.  During lockdown their systems performed poorly especially in the old parts of the village.  The other key point is we now have the choice of three main providers, grouping all the providers who use BT Openreach into one.  Lastly, and probably most importantly, it gives us one "full fibre to the home", known as FttP which neither BT nor Virgin have any plans to provide.  

FttP is next generation and is future proofed.  The current Truespeed service can go up to 10,000Mb/s (10Gb/s) but the technology exists today to put different equipment on the end of the exact same fibre and run 40,000Mb/s (40Gb/s) or even 100,000Mb/s (100Gb/s) but we wouldn't want to pay for that.

Truespeed divided Saltford into four sections and built the first three in 2020/2021.  The last section, the North West corner was the most challenging due to very poor BT ducting.  Both Telewest (now Virgin) and BT pushed cables without ducting into the ground which makes them impossible to upgrade and expensive to repair. This has required Truespeed to dig up parts of the pavement and fit new ducting.  These "groundworks" are expensive and slow.

Last Part of the Village

Truespeed are funded by investments from a major pension fund, which if you think about it is a very smart move.  Pension funds are looking for good steady long term investment and fibre infrastructure is exactly that.  Aviva would are their biggest investor as announced a new larger investment which has enabled the last part of Saltford to be completed.

As of end of June 2022, most of the groundworks has been completed.  Truespeed uses a groundworks contractor and you will see them in the form of roadworks around the North West part of the village.  Truespeed are now starting to run the core fibre and will start installations shortly and installing the distribution points which will be either on the top of telegraph poles or under inspection covers in the ground.  

In parallel with this work early installations are being booked now (early July 2022) and Truespeed hope to have all installations booked by the end of August 2022.  Truespeed are now knocking on doors and also calling to confirm which package customers want.  This is a chance to check when your existing deals run out, but remember Truespeed will buy you out of the last few months of your existing deal (subject I think to the package you are signing up for).  This is a great idea as you will want a small, probably one month overlap.