Community schemes

If you are interested in helping your local community to get better broadband sooner than planned in the Suffolk-wide roll-out programme, you may wish to consider community self-help solutions.

Fibre Community Partnership

Openreach’s Fibre Community Partnership scheme can bring forward the roll out of fibre broadband to homes and businesses by building a customised solution to meet your community’s needs.

Where possible Openreach brings together funding from local authorities, the Government's Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme and other grants to help make things affordable - Openreach contribute toward the cost in line with their commercial model too. Please note: as of January 2022, the Gigabit Broadband Voucher scheme is currently paused for Suffolk during the Suffolk Project Gigabit tender process. We will update this page as soon as the scheme is available again for Suffolk.

The team at Openreach will provide you with a quote using the most appropriate technology for your area, usually this will be a Fibre to the Premises solution (read our FAQ section to learn more about fibre / superfast broadband solutions).

Registering for a Fibre Community Partnership does not represent any commitment from the community at this stage, however it enables you to find out more about potential solutions and costs to deliver better broadband to your area. Find out more at Openreach's Fibre Community Partnership website.

Fibre Community Partnership - January 2022 update

Please note, due to high demand, Openreach have paused new registrations for the Fibre Community Partnership scheme - however, you can still register an interest and Openreach will contact you as soon as the scheme resumes.

Self-dig schemes

Self-help solutions include self-dig schemes, where a local farmer or land owner could provide some of the digging work to assist in bringing forward any potential upgrades.

We have more information on our website about self-dig schemes. We proactively encourage self-dig schemes. Please contact us if you are interested in a self-dig scheme. We can then connect you with other interested parties and, where possible, facilitate communities to be aligned with existing upgrade schemes.

East Suffolk Council: Enabling Better Broadband in East Suffolk

This project was set-up to support those communities who are not planned to receive an upgrade to affordable high-speed broadband services in the nearer future. The project works in close partnership with the Better Broadband for Suffolk Programme. Visit the East Suffolk website to find out more.