UPD West Sussex UK Sign £20.1m BDUK Contract for BT Superfast Broadband

The West Sussex County Council (WSCC) in southern England has today signed a new £20.1 million state aid supported contract with BT that will aim to make superfast broadband (25Mbps+) ISP connections available to 98% of local premises by the “start” of Spring 2016 (the rest will get at least 2Mbps).

The West Sussex Better Connected project will be jointly funded by £6,260,000 from the government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office and this has already been matched by the county council. Additional funding will also be provided by BT (£7.6m) and possibly through other initiatives too.

Lionel Barnard, WSCC Deputy Leader, said:

“We are delighted to have entered into a partnership arrangement with BT that will significantly increase the county’s opportunity to grow its economy, and help all residents to enjoy the benefits of being online. West Sussex County Council is very aware of the problems that slow speeds or in some cases, no broadband at all can cause local businesses and people working and running businesses from home. This was a key rationale behind the Council’s decision to invest more than £6 million to provide more access to better, faster broadband across the county. We are now looking to BT, having won the contract, to deliver services to those areas which we know are without.”

Bill Murphy, MD of NGA for BT, added:

“This is super news for the people of West Sussex. The county is mainly rural and over half of it lies in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. There is a need to balance new development and infrastructure needed by communities to reduce congestion and support a vibrant local economy while maintaining the character of the county. This is where fibre broadband can play a key role, for example, by revitalising small towns, villages and hamlets by making it possible to start and run a connected business from these locations.”

As usual most of BT’s work will focus on the deployment of their dominant up to 80Mbps FTTC service and some areas may benefit from their top 330Mbps capable FTTP solution. It should also be said that BT’s new FTTP-on-Demand (FoD) solution will eventually become available to order on all FTTC lines (it’s currently being rolled out), although this requires you to pay for the “last mile” style installation costs and that could run into thousands of pounds (details).

The first priority for BTOpenreach after today’s contract signing will be to begin the geographical survey work necessary to plan how to build the new telecommunications infrastructure. The official announcement is due later today and we’ll update this article once the final details are known.