UPDATE Northamptonshire UK Pick BT for Superfast Broadband Rollout

The Northamptonshire County Council (NCC) confirms that BT has been picked as the “preferred supplier” to help every household in the county gain access to a superfast broadband (30Mbps+) ISP connection by March 2017 (note: 90% coverage for speeds of 25Mbps+ is set for 2015).

A report outlining the Superfast Northamptonshire proposal, which is also required to make speeds of at least 2Mbps (Megabits per second) available to “all premises” by March 2015, is expected to be heard at next week’s meeting on 13th February. The official contract signing will probably follow a few weeks or months later.

The government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office has so far allocated £4.08 million to the project, which will be matched by the council and then matched again by BT (additional funding is also being sought). The scheme is expected to help around 81,099 homes and businesses in more rural parts of the county.

Cllr Andre Gonzalez De Savage said:

“I’m delighted that our plan to deliver superfast broadband throughout the county has reached this very significant stage.

This will have huge advantages for Northamptonshire as it will allow the county to be a strong competitor in the global digital economy and allow everyone to have access to new and improved services that are increasingly available online.”

However we would caution that the final dates and funding allocations are still subject to change. In particular it’s worth pointing out that NCC originally expected to begin the construction of BT’s new infrastructure by the end of last year but in reality we’re still some months away. As usual BT is expected to deploy its up to 80Mbps capable FTTC and 330Mbps FTTP fibre broadband services.

UPDATE 14th Feb 2013

As expected the council has confirmed the choice of BT for their supplier contract. The total contract value is around £34m.