West Sussex UK Complete £20m BT Fibre Broadband Rollout Contract

The £20.62m West Sussex Better Connected project in England claims to have completed its first roll-out contract with Openreach (BT), which originally aimed to ensure that “fibre broadband [FTTC/P] will be rolled out to around 98% of [local] homes and businesses” by Spring 2016.

Curiously the project’s official website promotes a lower target from the one announced several years ago and merely says it will “make it possible for more than 90% of the county to connect to better, faster broadband services by spring 2016“, without clarifying if that refers to “superfast” (24Mbps+) speeds or the raw fibre footprint including slower sub-24Mbps areas.

However we did clarify a couple of years ago that the 98% figure reflected a raw fibre footprint (including sub-24Mbps areas) and so far as we’ve been told this should now have been achieved (around 95% of the region should also be able to receive 24Mbps+ speeds), albeit ever so slightly later than planned.

Overall an additional 60,000 premises have been covered by the expansion, which is on top of the 350,000 that BT has already reached through its separate commercial roll-out. The first contract was funded by £6.26m from West Sussex Council, £6.76m from the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK programme and £7.6m from BT.

Ed Vaizey, Digital Economy Minister, said:

“Our rollout of superfast broadband has already taken superfast speeds to more than four million homes and businesses who would otherwise have missed out. The West Sussex Better Connected partnership has done a fantastic job and the widespread access to superfast broadband that this scheme is delivering will provide a tremendous boost to the West Sussex economy.”

Stacey King, BT’s Regional Director for the South East, added:

“It is great news that by working together efficiently and effectively the partnership has been able to provide faster internet speeds to Amberley village and Amberley First School. The engineering to provide high-speed broadband to the village has at times been challenging and at one point included crossing the river Arun over an historic bridge.

This investment in fibre broadband is another example of how faster internet speeds are transforming the online education and entertainment opportunities for communities as well as boosting the local economy as businesses use the technology to boost their competitiveness.”

At this point it’s worth highlighting that the West Sussex Council has already signed a second Superfast Extension Programme (SEP) contract with BT (here), which is worth £2.5 million and should ensure that another 3,000 homes and businesses in the county are covered by the end of 2017.

All of this should push BT’s raw “fibre broadband” footprint very close to universal coverage and the work has already started.