Phase 1 Superfast Broadband Rollout for Cambridgeshire UK Revealed

The state aid supported £45 million Connecting Cambridgeshire scheme, which aims to make BT’s superfast broadband (FTTC and FTTP) services available to 90% of premises in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough (England) by the end of 2015, has revealed preliminary coverage details for phase one of its roll-out.

At its launch in March 2013 the project was noticeably sparse on detail (here) and merely confirmed that over 100 telephone exchanges would be enabled to support the new service. But we now know that over 50 rural parishes and urban areas are “under consideration” for the first phase of the roll-out.

It’s understood that Phase One will run from December 2013 to June 2014 and thus the first street cabinets should go live with BT’s up to 80Mbps capable FTTC technology by the end of 2013 (more details should be revealed at regular intervals from September 2013). A rough map reveals which areas are likely to be covered as part of the first phase.

Suffice to say that South Cambridgeshire looks like it will have to wait because most of the effort for phase one appears to focus on the northern half of the county, with only the villages of Willingham, Papworth and Elsworth in the south being given any real improvement. But at least progress is finally being made.

Councillor Ian Bates, Cambridgeshire County Council, said:

“It’s great news that the roll-out of better broadband is on its way and we’re on track for work to begin by the end of the year so we can reach every community in Cambridgeshire by the end of 2015.

Some areas will benefit sooner than others and no-one wants to be last on the list for the roll-out, but the important thing is that we are getting on with this now. Without this intervention, around a third of premises across the county would not be able to receive superfast broadband.”

It’s worth pointing out that BT’s fibre broadband network will actually cover 98% of the county by the target date, although this equates to 90% being able to receive “superfast” (25Mbps+) speeds and the next 8% gaining anything up to 24Mbps (all within FTTC coverage). As usual the last 2% will still be stuck with a minimum of at least 2Mbps.

PS – Sorry we’re about a week late with this news as we didn’t immediately spot the map publication to accompany it (without that it was just another bland update). To be honest we really wish BTOpenreach would announce regular updates to a centralised list of BDUK supported upgrades because keeping track of all the regional announcements is quite painstaking.