Northamptonshire UK Sign Second Superfast Broadband Contract with BT

The Superfast Northamptonshire project in England, which is currently aiming to make BT’s superfast broadband (FTTC/P) services available to about 90% of premises by September 2015, has finally signed a new contract with BT under the Broadband Delivery UK based Superfast Extension Programme (SEP). An extra 20,465 premises will now benefit from the on-going roll-out.

At present the existing contract is expected benefit 56,000+ local homes and businesses, while the additional 20,465 (i.e. 6.4% of all premises in the county) will be added between 2016 and September 2018. The local authority, with support from BDUK, has contributed £7.6 million of extra public funding to the effort, while BT has invested another £3.3 million.

The contract itself was signed on 28th November last month and at that point the work with BT had already helped to upgrade around 34,280 additional premises with access to FTTC and some FTTP connectivity. The addition of a second contract means that “almost” 95% of all premises in the county should have access to superfast broadband speeds (24Mbps+), although the 2018 completion date suggests that it will finish later than the “by 2017” goal of BDUK.

Parts of rural villages including Dingley, Loddington, Welford and Rockingham will be among those to benefit from the forthcoming deployments. Now all they have to do is figure out how to fill the final 5% by 2020.