Broadband Campaign Overview

Soham On-Line Community Website initially started seriously campaigning for Broadband provision for Soham back in May of 2002 by promoting the BT Pre-registration Scheme. BT set an initial target 'trigger level' of 350 pre-registrations before the Soham telephone exchange would be upgraded to allow ADSL Broadband access.

At the end of October 2003 an announcement was made by the East of England Development Agency (EEDA) of a broadband competition they were launching called the 'Connecting Communities Competition' to help establish better broadband access in East Anglia. The competition prize was a share of 3 million pounds of funding to be distributed to the communities, who in EEDA’s opinion, had demonstrated a sound business case as well as proof of support from the local community.

On the announcement of the EEDA competition, Soham Town Forum (STF) immediately decided to officially enter a bid and over the next 6 months gathered a huge amount of support from businesses and residents in Soham and the surrounding villages of Wicken, Fordham, Isleham, Chippenham and Freckenham culminating in the submission of the final entry at the end of April 2003.

During the support gathering process for STF's competition bid there was a huge amount of help from East Cambridgeshire District Council (ECDC) who subsequently decided to enter their own bid to the competition to try and achieve broadband provision to all areas of the district. If the East Cambridgeshire District Council bid was successful, Soham Town Forum would retract their entry bid as all STF's objectives would have been met and covered by the ECDC bid.

Another independent campaign called 'Broadband 4 Soham' was started in January 2003 with the sole purpose and intention of reaching the BT 'trigger level' of 350. This campaign, supported by BT, involved promotional posters and leaflet drops to business premises and households in Soham as well as a website to try and get more people to pre-register. In March 2003, BT decided to drop the trigger levels on all exchanges that had one set by 50. Soham eventually reached its reduced trigger level of 300 on 7th July 2003 and ADSL Broadband finally went live in Soham on Wednesday 15th October 2003.

At the end of July 2003, EEDA announced the winning communities of the 'Connecting Communities Competition' and East Cambridgeshire District Council were delighted to have been awarded £300,000 to roll-out broadband to the areas of the district that would not have broadband access in the near or foreseeable future.

After just over a year of intense campaigning by many individuals and organisations from East Cambridgeshire who helped push the EEDA competition bid forward, by the end of 2004, Broadband is now available to nearly all the district. The larger settlements in East Cambridgeshire such as Ely, Soham, Littleport and Sutton also reached their BT target 'trigger levels' and had ADSL Broadband access at the end of December 2003.

 Broadband Project Completed for Rural East Cambridgeshire

East Cambridgeshire District Council (ECDC) and Trilogy Telecom Limited signed Heads of Terms for a project to make broadband services available on 12 selected exchanges covering over 40 communities in rural East Cambridgeshire in 2004. The result has been that over 97% of households and businesses in the area are able to enjoy high speed internet access and other services, and a total of 13,000 homes that were not currently able to receive broadband services from BT have directly benefited. The majority of funding for the project came from the East of England Development Agency (EEDA) as a result of their Connecting Communities Competition. Trilogy have deployed next generation ADSL2 technology that allows service to be provided over a 7.5km line length from the exchange. There is a significant improvement in range over the previous ADSL services provided by BT and have made all the difference in reaching homes and businesses in remoter rural communities. The project was conducted in 2 phases:-

Phase 1 was paid for with funds provided by EEDA and covered the enablement of 8 exchanges that were without broadband services from BT and came into service in September 2004.

Burwell – Covering Burwell, Swaffham Prior, Reach & River Bank
Pymoor – Covering Pymoor & Little Downham
Prickwillow – Covering Prickwillow
Bottisham – Covering Bottisham, Lode, Swaffham Bulbeck & Stow Cum Quy
Cheveley – Covering Cheveley, Ashley, Broad Green, Woodditton, Kirtling Green, Saxon Street, Ditton Green, Upend & Kirtling
Stetchworth – Covering Stetchworth, Dullingham, Brinkley, Burrough Green & Westley Waterless
Isleham – Covering Isleham
Stretham – Covering Stretham & Little Thetford

Phase 2 was be undertaken by Trilogy on a normal commercial basis and covered 4 exchanges already enabled by BT in Ely and Littleport and these came into service in December 2004, allowing broadband services to be provided to communities that were outside of reach, including the areas of Witchford, Stuntney, Black Horse Drove and Mepal.

Ely – Covering Ely, Stuntney, Queen Adelaide, Chettisham & Witchford
Littleport – Covering Littleport & Black Horse Drove

“The rural nature of the area means that while widespread broadband availability is particularly important for both the social and economic development of the district, we had at the time lagged behind the UK average. This arrangement with Trilogy has changed this and given us an availability of service that will match the very best in the country. This is very good news for those that live and work in the area”, said David Archer, Executive Director Development Services at East Cambridgeshire District Council who helped manage the project on behalf of the Council.

Trilogy were also awarded a similar EEDA funded contract by South Cambridgeshire District Council, and Mark Duddy, Managing Director of Trilogy Telecom added that, “These contracts allowd us to focus on bringing next generation broadband technologies to residential and business customers in rural Cambridgeshire, and give them access to services normally only accessible in major cities”.

To find out more about Trilogy Telecom go to www.trilogytelecom.co.uk, E-Mail:  or call 08701 999030.

 Winners of the EEDA 'Connecting Communities Broadband Competition Announced

The winners out of 87 communities from the Eastern Region who successfully entered the final stages of the East of England Development Agency (EEDA) 'Connecting Communities Competition' have been announced. EEDA delayed the announcement of the winners due to fact that they needed to go back and re-assess how the reduction of Trigger Levels by BT had affected the requirements of each entry bid. The East Cambridgeshire Rural Broadband Partnership bid that covers all the areas of the District that can't get broadband at present has been successful. EEDA announced the winning communities of the competition on Wednesday 23rd July 2003. Soham, Littleport, Ely and Sutton have all reached their target Trigger Levels for the BT Telephone Exchanges to be upgraded to allow ADSL Broadband. The Soham Telephone Exchange went ADSL Live on Wednesday 15th October 2003 so you can start pre-ordering a Broadband  connection from an Internet Service Provider (ISP) now. The winning communities of the EEDA 'Connecting Communities Competition'  are as follows:-

The competition, was part of the EEDA's Demand Broadband campaign, designed to speed up internet access to rural sites and help small businesses compete with those in metropolitan settings. With its scattered population, and few large urban centres, the east of England has many communities that broadband suppliers have said it is not commercially viable to connect. Groups of individuals from villages and companies were invited to apply for part of a £2.5 million fund to connect their communities to broadband. The winners were selected from 87 final entries in three categories - larger settlements, large villages/small towns and smaller villages - across the six EEDA counties. More than 2,000 people requested applications for the competition. Anglia TV's Graham Creelman, chairman of Living East, said the competition's design meant that even unsuccessful bids would still provide EEDA with a huge amount of detail about demand across the region. The information received from all the communities who entered the EEDAcompetition will be passed to 50 broadband suppliers which have registered with the agency. Mr Creelman said: "This is exactly how we hoped the competition would work to speed up the supply of broadband." By the end of the year, according to Mason Communications, 84 per cent of the region's population will be able to access broadband. Two years ago, it was predicted that just 63% of the eastern counties would have access to high-speed internet connections.

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