South Derbyshire District Council - Broadband in South Derbyshire

In many areas of South Derbyshire, especially the rural areas, the broadband infrastructure is too limited to allow people to access and use the Internet as they need to.

Infrastructure providers give the impression that the majority of people are able to get sufficient speeds to do what they want on the Internet, such as surfing or using the BBC I-Player. In some rural (and some urban) areas this isn’t the case.

Broadband Survey

Derbyshire County Council is carrying out 2 important broadband surveys, to identify local demand and discover where internet services are currently slow or even unacceptable. Please help them by completing the surveys, it may help to improve access in South Derbyshire.

Further information and links to the surveys can be found by following this link to the Derbyshire County Council website www.derbyshire.gov.uk

A major step forward has been achieved with the BT announcement about the upgrade of the Etwall Exchange in Autumn 2011. In addition to this BT had already announced infrastructure upgrades for the Swadlincote, Mickleover and Ashby exchanges and this will make a vast difference to businesses/residents served from these exchanges. But where does that leave everyone else? South Derbyshire District Council will continue to lobby to try and improve the infrastructure elsewhere in the District. Our next step is to bid with a local consortium for a grant from the 'Rural Development Programme for England' to upgrade the Overseal Exchange.

To allow the Council to continue to lobby for the whole of South Derbyshire we need to be aware of problems and concerns that local people and businesses have with their broadband connection. You can do this in the following ways;

Complete and submit the online form below or
Email your details and comments to broadband@south-derbys.gov.uk

We will keep people informed of any progress made by email.

According to BT Openreach figures 93% of properties in South Derbyshire receive speeds of 2Mb or better, this rises to 98% of properties receiving a speed of 0.5Mb or better. Do your experiences contradict this information? If so please let us know by one of the methods above.

Can I do anything about my current broadband speed?

Broadband speed and continuity is affected by a wide variety of factors often unique to a location. The main factors are:

Distance from the exchange
Contention ration (the number of people sharing a connection)
Time of day
Quality of modem and internal cables
Quality of external cables
Capacity of the website that is being looked at.

Advice on broadband and how to try to improve your broadband speed can be found in the attached document ‘How to fix slow broadband speeds’ at the bottom of this page under ‘Related documents’.

Advice is also available on the Internet, and there are a number of external websites listed at the bottom of this page under ‘External websites’. (Please note that the websites are for information purposes only. If you decide to follow any guidance on the websites, South Derbyshire District Council cannot be held accountable for any problems that may arise.)

page ref: SDDC 490

Please complete the following information.

Please complete the following questions

Title

First Name

Surname

Address

Postcode

Broadband Telephone No.

Email address

Type of premises

Current Speed