North Lincolnshire UK Bags Extra £1.2m to Expand Superfast Broadband

The North and North East Lincolnshire project to roll-out BT’s “high-speed fibre” (FTTC/P) based broadband network has received an additional boost of £1.2 million that should extend it to an extra 5,000 premises and a total coverage of 92% of local homes and businesses.

The original scheme, which was signed in June 2013 (here), aimed to roll-out the new service to 89% of local premises by the end of Spring 2015 and BTOpenreach later told ISPreview.co.uk that 85% of the related area could expect to get speeds of “40mbps plus”.

But now another £500k has been secured (Thorne Gazette) from the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office, which is in addition to an extra £150k from North Lincolnshire Council and another £562k from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). As a result the total investment is now worth £9.6 million (£4.2m of which is coming from BT).

Liz Redfern, Leader of North Lincolnshire Council, said:

“We were keen to not only reach the government’s broadband target but exceed it. With this funding, we are well on the way to do just that. Thousands more people and local businesses in Northern Lincolnshire will be able to access fibre broadband as a result by the end of Spring 2015.

We have been working with many businesses as part of the business support package to help them get the most of out of the internet in preparation for the fantastic broadband network. The event was a great way of keeping residents and business up-to-date on the rollout of broadband in their area.”

Further information about the project can be found here – Northernlincs Broadband.