UPDATE Merseyside UK Signs GBP15.9m Superfast Broadband Rollout Deal

A partnership of five councils led by Liverpool City Council will today sign a new state aid supported £15.9m deal with BT to roll-out its “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) network to up to 98% of homes and businesses in the metropolitan county of Merseyside (North West England) by the end of July 2016.

The Merseyside Connected project, which will help an additional 43,000 premises in the area gain access to BT’s up to 80Mbps FTTC and some 330Mbps FTTP services, is funded by £5.46m from the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) budget, £6m from BT itself and £4.4 million from Europe (ERDF). Curiously the councils themselves have not contributed.

Joe Anderson, Mayor of Liverpool, said:

“The internet is a huge part of everyday life and it is vital that we do not get left behind if we are to compete effectively with the rest of the UK. This investment in infrastructure will make a big difference to businesses and households across the City Region. I am delighted we have been able to sign this deal with BT which means they can crack on with installing the latest technology.”

Bill Murphy, BT’s MD of NGA Broadband, added:

“Access to high speed broadband is rapidly becoming a key ingredient for economic growth and a fast and reliable broadband service is as important as good road and rail links for businesses in the modern day. It is also a major determining factor in where businesses decide to locate.

Fibre broadband opens up a whole raft of leading-edge software and applications that could benefit business – allowing them to work more efficiently, for people to work when and where they want, to expand their business offering and connect with customers, not just locally but all over the world.”

Apparently the three-year long deployment will begin with the usual period of planning and an engineer survey from BTOpenreach. The first building work on the ground should then get underway during summer 2014. The councils of Knowsley, St Helens, Sefton and Wirral are also involved.

UPDATE 6:43am

A spokesperson for BT has kindly informed us that 89% should be getting “super-fast” download speeds of 24Mbps and above, albeit in the intervention area. As usual everybody else will get speeds of at least 2Mbps.