Talk:Prickwillow

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Expansion, 7 May 2007

I've just expanded this article substantially -- I hope folks agree that I was right to remove the stub tag as a consequence. It's been a little while since I made any major edits on Wikipedia, so apologies in advance for any gross breaches of style!

One other point: The UK & Ireland Genealogy and Cambridgeshire genealogy pages themselves take information from a number of third party sources. If anyone has those sources to hand at any point, it'd be useful to check them and then cite those directly, rather using than the intermediate sources that I've had to cite in the meantime. Sjb90 23:27, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Broadband

Is this still true that Prickwillow doesn't have provision from BT? I lived in West Wratting and spent many a cold evening down at South Cambridgeshire District Council which was then in Hills Road, Cambridge campaigning to get broadband in.

There is a small sub-exchange in West Wratting which actually connects up to the Madingley exchange and there was almost always a BT OpenWorld van outside it and I think was just used as a holiday job, the brick building is about 40 foot by 20 foot I would say and I imagine it could easily fit in a stack of porn and a pool table as well as a small digital exchange for about 500 customers who would still refer to their numbers just as three digit numbers (I was on 264 for example). I imagine this sub-exchange was put in during the Second World War when there was a large base for Lancasters at RAF Wratting Common.

I think West Wratting was one of the first villages to get broadband due to my somewhat heavy-handed efforts and the pub there, the Chestnut Tree, one of the first pubs in rural Cambridgeshire to have free Wi-Fi. But the scheme was being forever thwarted by BT and in the end it was BT who put in DSLAMs in the exchange. Cos it is a small village and nobody is very far from the exchange they actually now get excellent service! But it took about two years to get it. Various companies suggested a microwave backlink to Cambridge, and so on, but BT wanted £300,000 for separating their equipment at the exchange from the other equipment, totally unwarranted when the East of England Development Agency had £300,000 total to do the whole of South Cambridgeshire and a separation cage including the work probably costs a max of £1,000.

I can source this from the parish magazine "Challenge" which is also filed for the record at the Cambridge Folk Museum, I think, but since I edited that for years and did the print run, that is a bit navel-gazing I think and would not be regarded as RS here since my signature is on the entries for the Broadband so that is kinda just referring back to myself even though it is true. Si Trew (talk) 09:37, 20 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

ALso the neighbouring village of Balsham, Cambridgeshire is a bit odd cos half of it came off the Wratting exchange and half of it went down to Linton, Cambridgeshire's exchange (you could tell by the three digits nobody used: 260 and 261 went up to Wratting, but 864 if I remember correctly went down to Linton. So when they got Broadband half the village had it when we got it in Wratting, and half didn't until BT put it in at Linton. Si Trew (talk) 09:53, 20 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]