Worcestershire UK Name First BDUK and BT Fibre Broadband Rollout Areas

The state aid fuelled £20.75m Superfast Worcestershire (England) project has today revealed which communities will be the first to get access to BT’s “high-speed fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) network, which aims to pass 90% of local premises by the middle of 2016.

Overall the project aims to help connect nearly 55,000 premises to the new service, which might have otherwise been left neglected. The work is in addition to BT’s existing commercial deployment that will have enabled over 176,000 local homes and businesses by the end of Spring 2014.

Bill Murphy, BTs Managing Director of NGA, said:

“Since the Superfast Worcestershire partnership was launched last summer, teams have been busy planning and building the new network that will transform the way people across the county communicate, work, learn and enjoy their spare time.

It’s a huge engineering project that will involve the laying of more than 700 kilometres of fibre optic cable across the county – equivalent to travelling from Bromsgrove to Brussels and back again.”

The first areas to benefit from the new scheme (between April and the end of September 2014), which are listed below, will also been complemented by infill work in parts of Evesham, Worcester City Centre and the Malvern district (this includes a number of business premises on Enigma Business Park).

Phase 1 Communities for Worcestershire

Ashton-under-Hill
Badsey
Broadway
Cropthorne
Hallow
Harvington

Openreach are also due to start preliminary surveying work in parts of Wychavon, Wyre Forest, Malvern Hills and the areas of Bromsgrove where their FTTC/P network has yet to reach, which will support Phase 2 development between October and December 2014.