£3m South Gloucestershire BT Deal Targets Universal Superfast Broadband

The South Gloucestershire Council in England, which is already working with Openreach (BT) to extend “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) coverage to 97% of the region by December 2017, has signed a new £3m contract that will benefit a further 4,300 premises (3,800 via FTTP).

The deal, which is supported by funding of £2m from the central Government’s Broadband Delivery UK programme and £1m from the West of England Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), aims to complete the extended roll-out in South Gloucestershire by the end of 2018 and this should take local coverage of “superfast broadband” very close to universal levels (currently it’s already at around 95%).

The deployment is expected to use a lot more of Openreach’s ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premise (FTTP) broadband technology than before, although the operator will also continue to roll-out their slower hybrid Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) service in a number of areas. Work to provide the service will start later this year.

Cllr John Goddard, Cabinet Member for Corporate Resources, said:

“So far, more than 20,000 homes and businesses have been able to access fibre broadband as part of our rollout across South Gloucestershire. We have always said that we are committed to providing an improved broadband service to as much of the district as possible and this latest investment could see up to 99 per cent of premises covered when combined with the commercial programme.

Once complete, thousands more homes and businesses in more rural areas are set to benefit from a service that would not have been available without the council’s continued efforts to bring about these improvements.”

Matt Hancock, Minister of State for Digital, said:

“The transformation of the digital landscape in South Gloucestershire to date has been tremendous, but there’s still more to be done. I’m delighted that another 4,300 local homes and businesses are now going to benefit from a faster and more reliable broadband service, ensuring they can get the fast and reliable connectivity they need, both now and for the future.”

Some of the communities set to benefit in the latest phase of the programme include several rural areas not previously covered by the existing roll-out and remaining communities from the previous two phases, including: Almondsbury, Alveston, Aust, Bitton, Bromley Heath, Cold Ashton, Cromhall, Dodington, Downend, Doynton, Falfield, Frampton Cotterell, Hanham Abbots, Hanham, Hawkesbury, Horton, Iron Acton, Kingswood, Marshfield, Olveston, Patchway, Pilning, Severn Beach, Pucklechurch, Rangeworthy, Rockhampton, Soundwell, Siston, Sodbury, Tormarton, Tortworth, Westerleigh, Wick, Abson, Wickwar, Winterbourne and Yate.

Take note that the South Gloucestershire Broadband project is separate from the joint Gloucestershire and Herefordshire (Fastershire) scheme that covers the remaining areas.