Our plans to relocate the heart of the Ashton-Hayes, Manley & Mouldsworth network will help connect customers more quickly to an even better service.
The master cabinet - the most vital organ for any network build - is currently located on the outskirts of Great Barrow, but a few unexpected challenges caused us to consider a transplant.
As they say, every cloud has a silver lining, and we've now been given the go-ahead to house a second cabinet at Manley Village Hall.
Bringing the master cabinet within the boundaries of the three main villages, will not only help speed up the process of connecting customers, it will provide an ultra-reliable and robust service.
Delays Across the UK
New-build broadband networks across the country have experienced delays as the Government's BCMS (Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport) grapple with its' new voucher scheme. This is the method it funds its' national 'Building Digital UK' roll out and the changes came into force on April 8.
A quick re-think
While these issues were being resolved, we were busy overcoming some more localised hurdles - difficulties gaining some of the authorisations we needed to install our fibre cables along the route we'd initially mapped out.
And this is when our network planners came up with the ideal solution - to find a new location for our master cabinet. And we were delighted when the ideal one came up. "We're really grateful for the support from the village hall management committee,' said Cane Awork, Gigaloch's project lead for Ashton Hayes, Mouldsworth & Manley. "Building a second cabinet closer to the centre of the network is a great boost in two ways. Firstly, we can bypass the sections of land that were proving difficult to gain access to, and secondly, it will really future proof the network, providing an even faster, more stable service that can easily be expanded."
Making great progress
Now the build is back on track and we've set ourselves a new target - the end of the summer.
We've continued to make great progress in the face the challenges we've talked about in this article. We've installed over 20 kilometres of duct across the three villages, we've routed fibre to 70 homes and at 50 of these we've installed the optical switch needed for their connection.