Arundel and South Downs MP Andrew Griffith was pleased to be able to join residents and Openreach’s team in Graffham to hear how they have worked together to bring ultrafast broadband to this rural village.
At a breakfast meeting in The Foresters Arms – one of the many local businesses which has benefitted from the delivery of faster and more reliable fibre broadband connections – Andrew discussed the roll out project with Kieran Wines, Openreach’s regional partnership manager, and Antonia Jamison, a Graffham resident and owner of Westerlands, a farm and hospitality business which has accommodation for visitors to South Downs National Park.
They were joined by Simon Longman, local resident and one of the community leads who kick-started the project in Graffham and co-ordinated between Openreach and local residents. Simon explained that many homes in the village, particularly on the outskirts a long way from the old telephone exchange, had poor broadband speeds before the arrival of Full Fibre.
The Openreach Fibre Community Partnership programme has reached more than 300 homes and businesses in Graffham after residents used the UK Government funded Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme, alongside a contribution from Openreach, to help fund the village’s digital transformation.
Businesses in Graffham that have upgraded to Full Fibre are now enjoying the benefits of ultrafast broadband, while residents are able to work from home without suffering connection problems.
Graffham resident, Simon Longman, said:
“Being a professional working from home, it made video calls quite difficult,”
“We also couldn’t take advantage of the modern streaming services. A lot of people in Graffham are professionals. They couldn’t replicate working in the office with working at home – they can now. They get the same speeds. It’s been invaluable to the businesses, the farms, the pubs, the professional people who live here.”
Antonia Jamison described the delivery of ultrafast broadband as “vital”, saying:
“It has been very difficult to operate our business without this new level of connectivity. We couldn’t even download bank statements or upload photos. Our corporate clients expect high speed internet access which we haven’t been able to offer until now. This has been hugely transformational for us and we can’t thank Openreach enough.”
Andrew Griffith MP said:
“Decent fast and reliable broadband is absolutely vital. Coming to politics after a business career, it was always going to be one of the top things I tried to deliver – working to support local residents like Simon, Mark and Bridget who led this project on behalf of the Graffham community.”
Kieran Wines, Openreach’s regional partnership manager, said:
“We welcomed the opportunity to host Andrew Griffith MP to show how great partnership can support upgrading connectivity for harder-to-reach communities like Graffham. Our engineers works hard every day to keep West Sussex connected, and it was great to share the challenges and realities of delivering this technology.”
With download speeds of 1Gbps, Full Fibre is up to 10 times faster than the average home broadband connection. That means faster game downloads, better quality video calls and higher resolution movie streaming. It also enables multiple devices to be used at the same time without experiencing slowdown – so more people in a household can get online.
Openreach is working to build and connect customers to the company’s ultrafast, ultra-reliable Full Fibre broadband network - which is on track to reach 25 million homes and businesses by December 2026.
Residents and businesses can use Openreach’s fibre checker to see what infrastructure is available at their address.
