A SMALL Oxfordshire village will be the first in the country to have every house connected to super fast broadband.

Deddington was chosen by British Telecom to trial a pilot scheme that will see fibre optic cables connected to each of the 1,400 houses.

It is part of a £2.6bn plan to introduce fibre optic broadband across the country.

Deddington residents have complained of internet speeds as slow as half a megabit per second, way below the national average of nine.

But once the service goes live in the new year that will jump to a maximum of 300mbps. This will allow people to download even huge files such as high definition movies in a matter of minutes.

BT Openreach engineers have been working in the village since April and have now laid the majority of a fibre optic ‘spine’ from neighbouring Banbury.

Each fibre optic cable is thinner than a human hair and unlike traditional copper cabling, the speed does not reduce with distance.

Head of the pilot Steve Jones said: “We have never before provided fibre technology to 100 per cent of properties, to every single house.”

There are also plans to roll out the technology to the neighbouring villages of Clifton, Hempton, Barford St Michael and part of Aynho.

Next Generation Access managing director Bill Murphy said: “Deddington will be in a unique position in the country, if not the world.

“It has been put on the fibre map.”

Challenges were faced in five parts of the village where pavements and roads had to be dug up, and in providing cable to isolated properties.

Simon Baxter, managing director of Deddington business Dijon Designs, said: “When the school kids finish at about 3.30pm the speed here really drops.

“At times we are lucky to get half a megabit. And when we are downloading big files, we let all the staff know they won’t be able to send emails for a while.

“If this opportunity hadn’t come around, we would have had to move.”

ALL ABOUT DEDDINGTON

  • The village of Deddington is believed to have been first settled in the sixth or seventh century.
  • Deddington Castle was built to the east of the village and was demolished in the 14th century. It was excavated last century and the remains recovered.
  • In the 18th century it had a succession of clockmakers and is now home to around 2,100 people.
  • It has four pubs, a regular farmers’ market and various shops.
  • The Deddington exchange was chosen for its size, as it serves around 1,400 lines. Householders have not been charged for the installation but they will have to pay once they start using the service. They will be able to choose their service provider, so do not have to use BT.

BROADBAND SPEED

  • A two-hour film in standard definition (1.5 gigabytes) will download in less than 40 seconds.
  • A two-hour high definition film (five gigabytes) will download in two minutes and 10 seconds.
  • The technology also means a family could be simultaneously downloading a movie, watching a TV replay service, surfing the internet and playing games online with the speed unaffected.