Lancashire Council Details Phase 2 BDUK and BT Fibre Broadband Rollout

The Lancashire County Council (LCC) has announced the beginning of Phase 2 in its £62.5 million state aid supported project with BT to deploy superfast broadband (FTTC/P) services out to cover 97% of local premises by the end of 2014 2015.

Phase 1 of the Superfast Lancashire rollout was announced in March 2013 (here), which included 2,500 premises in Caton, Chatburn, Forton and Galgate (the first customers are due to be connected by September 2013) and additional coverage in these areas would also be added during later stages.

On top of that BT were also working to expand their existing coverage in Blackburn, Burnley, Lancaster and Leyland. As a result phase 1 was expected to help extend BT’s fibre optic based network to a total of 13,000 homes and businesses.

BTOpenreach has now started work on Phase 2, which is expected to extend BT’s up to 80Mbps capable FTTC network coverage to around 4,600 premises in the communities of Burscough, Carnforth, Bolton-le-Sands, Great Eccleston, Scarisbrick and Hurst Green.

As before Phase 2 will also work to expand BT’s FTTC coverage to a further 5,500 additional premises in communities where the service is already partially available. The related areas include Accrington, Church, Clayton-le-Moors, Bamber Bridge, Higher Walton, Lostock Hall, Penwortham, Longridge, Nelson, Barrowford, Fence, Poulton and Staining.

Jennifer Mein, Leader of LCC, said:

“Superfast Lancashire is vital for the county and will ensure that our people and businesses can benefit from the next generation of superfast broadband. The latest phase will bring those benefits to 10,000 more homes and businesses by the end of the year. By the end of 2015, 97 per cent of the county will have access to superfast broadband, putting Lancashire in the vanguard of the digital revolution.”

Superfast Lancashire has also opened a Business Support Centre, which is apparently “run by a team of specialists” and has been designed to help advise small and medium-sized businesses (SME) across the county how the technology can be used to enhance their business.

It should of course be said that the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) scheme is not the only game in town and indeed the rival B4RN (Broadband 4 Rural North) project is also working to connect thousands of rural homes in north Lancashire UK via their ambitious 1Gbps (Gigabits per second) capable fibre optic FTTH network.