New fibre cabinets have gone live in more than 100 villages in South Cambridgeshire during the first phase of the Connecting Cambridgeshire superfast broadband rollout, which means more than 27,700 premises in the district that would not have been able to get it otherwise can now get high speed fibre broadband.

Many homes and businesses in the villages of Melbourn, Meldreth, Shepreth, Great and Little Chishill, Foxton, Bassingbourn, and Guilden Morden can now upgrade to fibre broadband through their internet service provider.

However, some premises connected to an upgraded cabinet are too far away to receive a fibre service and the high demand for fibre broadband also means some villagers may have to wait for the capacity of the cabinet to be increased before they can order high speed packages.

Connecting Cambridgeshire programme director Noelle Godfrey said: “This is a complex engineering project and we know there is more work to do to connect small pockets of premises in areas that are harder to reach, or where coverage and speed is not as good as anticipated after new cabinets have gone live.

“We understand how frustrating it is for people waiting for better broadband and we are working with BT to use the additional funding to reach as many premises as possible with fibre broadband over the next two years, with other technologies such as wireless and satellite being used to close the gaps by 2020.”

Detailed planning is underway and information will be available in the coming months on the ‘my area’ pages of the Connecting Cambridgeshire website at www.connectingcambridgeshire.co.uk.

Councillor Susan van de Ven, who represents Meldreth on Cambridgeshire County Council, said: “I’m extremely impressed by the Connecting Cambridgeshire team. They are working all day and all night.

“For the project to be as effective as it can be, it needs to reach everyone, and a lot of people work from home in this area.”

If you want to know more, you are invited to the Elin Way Community Room in Meldreth on Wednesday, April 13, at 7pm, where a Connecting Cambridgeshire County Council officer will bring you up to date on how the project is progressing and what is being done to address clusters of properties left out.