10,000 Extra Premises in Leicester to Get BT’s Fibre Broadband

A new contract worth £5 million has been signed with Openreach (BT) to expand the operator’s roll-out of “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) services, which will cover another 10,000 homes and businesses in the city of Leicester (Leicestershire, East Midlands of England) over the next 2 years.

The deal forms part of the wider £28 million+ Superfast Leicestershire project, which is already working through two existing contracts to ensure that 72,000 (82,000 if you include today’s announcement) additional premises can access “superfast broadband” speeds of at least 24Mbps by 2018 (around 96% coverage); 65,000 of those have already been completed.

However the new contract, which is being funded by £2.8 million from BT, £1.1 million from the Local Growth Fund and a further £1.1 million from the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK programme, appears to focus almost exclusively on Leicester itself.

Peter Soulsby, Leicester’s City Mayor, said:

“Leicester City Council is delighted to be working with partners to increase the coverage of superfast broadband in Leicester, providing first class connectivity to support business innovation and growth.”

Steve Henderson, BT’s Regional Director, said:

“Our Superfast Leicestershire partnership has already made huge progress in making fibre broadband available across the county. Fibre plays such an important role in everyday life and to our local businesses and we’re delighted to be extending the programme into areas in and around the city centre.”

We should point out that Leicester already has strong coverage of superfast broadband connectivity and appears to have largely achieved the Government’s national coverage goal of 95%, which is thanks to the efforts of both Openreach (BT) and Virgin Media. But some parts remain poorly served and today’s deal could achieve near universal coverage of the city area.

Apparently one of the first areas to benefit from this investment will be the Hamilton Office Park, a small business development around three miles north-east of the city centre. After that a number of other areas, such as Stoneygate, Aylestone, Evington and Beaumont Leys, will also see an expansion of BT’s network.