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Suffolk UK Celebrates Achieving 90% Coverage of Superfast Broadband

Friday, Jul 21st, 2017 (5:13 pm) - Score 596

The Better Broadband for Suffolk project in England has celebrated after their joint contract with Openreach (BT) managed to push the local coverage of FTTC/P based “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) networks to 90% of homes and businesses, with 98% being the next target for 2020.

Overall 123,684 additional premises have been reached by the deployment, with take-up in related areas currently standing at over 42% (315,000 premises if you include commercial roll-outs). On top of that Suffolk was one of the first areas to sign a second extension contract with BT and the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK scheme, which occurred all the way back in August 2015 and aimed to push the coverage to 95% of local homes and businesses “before 2018” (here).

At this point there appears to be a little bit of a disconnection between the use of “fibre broadband” and “superfast broadband” terminology in some of the announcements, which makes it hard to know whether that 95% figure reflects the coverage of “superfast” or merely the raw fibre footprint (inc. areas with sub-24Mbps speeds). Suffolk would struggle to hit 95% coverage of “superfast broadband” by the end of 2017 and so mid or late 2019 seems more likely.

On top of that the Government’s Digital Minister and MP for West Suffolk, Matt Hancock, has today announced that the local authority have also signed a third contract with Openreach that will push the coverage of “superfast broadband” out to 98% of local homes and businesses by sometime in 2020 (i.e. 50,000 additional premises).

Jane Storey, Suffolk County Council’s Deputy Leader, said:

“While it’s great that 90% of Suffolk homes and businesses are now connected to fibre broadband, there is still more work to be done to get the entire county connected to high-speed internet. We remain committed to delivering that, and making sure that no-one is left behind.

The new agreement to reach 98% during 2020 is a big leap forward, and adds to the significant increase in broadband coverage since we started this work in 2010.

But we’re now facing the toughest challenge – connecting the properties in the most remote locations in Suffolk. It’s the farms, the hamlets and the really rural communities that need our support.

A lot of hard work has gone into getting where we are now and this will continue as we strive to give everyone in Suffolk faster internet speeds.”

Sadly the announcement doesn’t include any information about the funding or technology split for the third contract. However we are told that plans are already being developed for tackling the remaining 2%, although the details for this have yet to be finalised.

Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
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