70k Devon and Somerset UK Premises to See Fibre Broadband by Summer 2014

The Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS) project in England, which is investing £94 million to help make BT’s superfast broadband FTTC/P (25Mbps+) services available to “around” 90% of local premises by the end of 2016 (here), has today pushed aside the floods and announced another new batch of local upgrades.

At present the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) supported scheme is already working to make the “fibre broadband” network available to an additional 44,000 local homes and businesses by March 2014 (16,000 properties in 38 communities have already been passed).

The latest areas should push this up to 70,000 by “early” Summer 2014 (i.e. the new areas below represent around 26,000 homes and businesses), although it’s worth noting that the significant flooding has caused some changes.

New Coverage Areas (Devon)
Braunton
Sowton
Pinhoe
Topsham
Kingskerswell
Swimbridge

New Coverage Areas (Somerset)
Spaxton
North Petherton

Some of the above telephone exchange areas are located in urban areas, although BT claims that they can also “reach deeply into rural areas and cover many small villages“. On top of that BTOpenreach will work to extend existing FTTC/P coverage in Ilminster and Newton Abbot.

Unsurprisingly many of the new areas will be in Devon, which is intentional to help work around the floods in Somerset.

David Hall, Deputy Leader of Somerset County Council, said:

“We are delighted with the progress that has been made so far but clearly the severe flooding in Somerset is posing challenges for the engineering teams who are rolling out the new network. Connecting Devon and Somerset is working very effectively to deal with these and ensure the roll-out continues at a fast pace. For example, where the flooding is particularly serious we will switch some work to less severely affected areas until the waters subside.”

Laurent Boon, BT’s CDS Programme Manager, added:

“Despite the difficult weather, the partnership has achieved strong progress and is already bringing great benefits to rural communities. On the first anniversary since the partnership’s contract signing, we have made fibre broadband available to more than 16,000 premises and put in place clear plans to reach 70,000 by early Summer. This is a major boost for our households and businesses in rural areas.”

Like all such projects the CDS scheme has also confirmed that they’re “actively seeking more funding to further extend the availability of superfast broadband across the whole area“, which is likely to come from the BDUK’s additional allocation of £250m by the UK Government (the council may have to match this). Details on this are due to surface shortly.