UPDATE Norfolk Sign BT Deal to Expand Fibre Broadband Coverage to 90%

The Better Broadband for Norfolk project in England, which currently aims to make BT’s superfast broadband (FTTC/P) service available to 80% of local premises by the end of 2015, has today signed a second (Phase 2) contract worth £17.9m that will extend the services reach to 90% of the county’s homes and businesses.

The original (BDUK Phase 1) contract was worth £41m, while the new deal sees another £6m of central Government funding from the Broadband Delivery UK programme being matched by £5m from New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership and £1m from the Norfolk County Council. BT will also be contributing £5.9m over the term of the contract.

In addition to the latest £17.9m deal, another £6.4m is said to have also been committed to help Norfolk contribute to the Government’s national target of making high-speed broadband available to 95% of UK homes and businesses by the end of 2017.

Apparently half of the £6.4m has been pledged by five of Norfolk’s district councils (Breckland, Broadland, King’s Lynn and West Norfolk, North Norfolk and South Norfolk) and the remainder from central government. At present though this extra funding is still a matter of on-going discussions and further details about how it might be spent are not due to be announced until summer 2015.

Bill Murphy, BT Managing Director for NGA, said:

“We are pleased to have been selected as the preferred partner for this project. This will build upon the success of both our own commercial roll-out in the county as well as our existing partnership with Norfolk County Council. In total we’ve already provided more than 290,000 Norfolk homes and businesses with access to high-speed fibre broadband and we look forward to extending this even further to bring the benefits of fibre broadband to even more parts of the county.”

George Nobbs, Leader of Norfolk County Council, said:

“The difference the Better Broadband for Norfolk programme is making, particularly to those living and working in our villages and market towns, is remarkable. The broadband inequality that has previously existed in Norfolk is being whittled away and, with this extension, will be nearly eradicated. The whole county stands to benefit from the knock-on effect, with at-home learning and working and rural entrepreneurship among the opportunities that will be unlocked.”

Meanwhile the current (Phase 1) BBfN programme is set to continue until December 2015 and has so far made the service available to 119,000 local homes and businesses. The table below also gives a useful breakdown by district, and also a total for Norfolk, for the number of premises connected to the fibre broadband network as a result of commercial coverage (i.e. no public funding used) and as a result of the current BBfN contract and the second contract (rounding may vary total coverage by plus/minus one per cent within any district).

It’s worth pointing out that the current 80% target represents “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) coverage (i.e. raw fibre broadband coverage, including sub-24Mbps areas, will no doubt extend even further beyond the 80%), while today’s 90% is spoken alongside the more generic phrase of “fibre broadband” and this may or may not reflect superfast speeds. We have asked for a clarification, although at the time of writing one had not yet arrived.

UPDATE 29th Jan 2015

According to a BT spokeswoman, the new 90% target merely reflects “fibre broadband” coverage (i.e. includes sub-24Mbps FTTC areas). In other words the reach of superfast broadband (24Mbps+) is probably a few percentage points lower, likely to be around 85-87% (this is our guesstimate).

Norfolk will clearly miss the Government’s 95% target, although these days they tend to promote it as a national average or something along those lines.