Happy Christmas from the Chalfont Heights Roads Committee!
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
Early date for your diary: the Annual General Meeting this year will be slightly earlier than usual, on Friday 8 February at the Parish Church Hall in Church Lane, Chalfont St Peter.
It will start at 7.30pm promptly; drinks will be served as you arrive, from 7pm onwards. A copy of the Annual Report will be circulated to you in January, before the AGM. We look forward to seeing you there.
FASTER BROADBAND
Just to note the availability of faster Broadband on the estate: with thanks to Sean McC for researching this with BT, here is an update:
• New fibre optic lines have note yet been laid in the village; what has occurred is simply a modification to the existing copper line network which allows it to carry significant additional traffic.
• At some stage in the coming years, BT reports that new fibre optic lines will be laid — but no dates have been scheduled.
• A data capacity upgrade to the existing copper lines is now available to every home in Chalfont Heights if they switch to “BT Infinity”, which will allow speeds up to 56 MBps (possibility of 20x faster service than currently provided).
• If individual home owners on the estate are interested in upgrading, first they will need to have BT as their service provider. Then they can contact BT at 0800 800 150 and ask to be upgraded to “Infinity”. The process involves a BT engineer coming to your home and updating the master socket.
• BT told Sean that for those currently using BT as their service provider, there is no charge to update the master socket and that the monthly charge for “Infinity” is £18 at 40 Gigabyte, or £26 for unlimited (these are based upon 18-month packages).
Comment from George Eykyn: I would add, having upgraded to BT Infinity, that the download and upload speeds I get have been improved in practice by approximately 5-6 times, with a maximum download speed tested at 37 MBps. Note that the upgrade process also removes your ability to make BT internet phone calls (though I believe Skype etc isn’t affected). In November, I paid a £25 charge for the upgrade of the master socket. If we hadn’t already got a “BT Hub version 3”, we’d have had to pay about £7 for the hardware too. The monthly charges are exactly what I was paying before.
J Stone kindly points out that if you are a registered BT shareholder, you can get a special Infinity deal for unlimited usage and anytime telephone calls for only £21 per month plus line rental.