Lincolnshire UK Boosts Fibre Broadband Coverage via Extra GBP2.8m

The £48m Onlincolnshire project in the East Midlands (England), which initially aimed to make BT’s superfast broadband (25Mbps+) network available to “at least” 88% of all homes and businesses in the county by April 2016, has won another £2.8m to help cover an extra 5,000 homes and businesses.

The original project was funded by £14.3m from the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office, £11.2m from the county council, £4m from district authorities and £18.8m from BT. By comparison the extra funding will see the European Regional Development Fund contribute £1.6m, Lincolnshire County Council adding another £510,000 and lastly BT will also stick £680,000 into the pot.

As a result the scheme should now be able to reach 5,000 extra properties with 2Mbps or faster connectivity (4,000 of those can expect superfast speeds of 25Mbps+), which will be achieved within the existing timescale and pushes the current goal from “at least” 88% to “over” 89% of the county.

Bill Murphy, BT’s Managing Director for NGA Broadband, said:

“Hard work and commitment to this project has secured further investment which will bring fibre broadband to thousands more homes and businesses in Lincolnshire. The most important aim is to ensure as many people as possible can benefit from fibre broadband, so this is great news for both businesses and consumers in the county.”

It’s worth pointing out that BT’s separate commercial deployment has already made their FTTC/P “fibre broadband” technology available to around 167,000 Lincolnshire homes and businesses. In addition Lincolnshire still has the possibility to extend again by bidding for a slice of the additional £250m that has been allocated to BDUK.

The Onlincolnshire project last year began enabling its first community, Spalding, which occurred some two months ahead of schedule.