A few residents will already have been in touch with providers and one or two have already had high-speed internet services connected following the successful installation before Christmas.

Two of the promised 3 roadside cabinets are now operational.  No 6 is just the other side of the Parish boundary in Ashby St Mary, at the junction of Chapel Road and Chapel Lane.  That serves the houses on Folly Lane.

No 7 is a little way down Folly Lane from its junction with The Street and serves the majority of the village.  Because the links from the Thurton exchange to the cabinet are now fibre-optic, the signal emerging from the cabinet is much stronger.  Though designed to meet the needs of households up to just short of the Manor, in practice residents on Claxton Corner (and even some way up Church Lane) will be able to get higher speeds, though the installation later this year of the third cabinet (No 8) should improve the speed at that end of the village dramatically.

The easiest way to check whether you are covered by either of the two cabinets which are live is to use this link BT Checker.  The best way to search is by entering your telephone number and pressing Submit.

You should then get a chart something like the one below which your Site Manager got when using his own number.  If high-speed broadband is available you will have entries labelled VDSL as shown below inside the red circle.  In this case BT are saying I can get speeds of up to 80Mps, which is around 20 times my current speed.  ADSL identifies much slower copper based broadband.

This improved service does not come without extra cost however.  You will need to either negotiate with your current provider or use one of the comparison sites to see which companies offer such services in Claxton, and at what price.