North Yorkshire UK Confirm Funding for 100% BT Fibre Broadband Cover

The state aid supported Superfast North Yorkshire project in England, which is working with BT to make “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) services available to 90% of local premises by the end of October 2014, has formally approved another £10m to boost the network’s coverage up to their target of 100% by the end of 2017.

According to the North Yorkshire County Council, some £3m will come from the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK office, with another £3m from the council, £2m from the European Regional Development Fund and as expected BT will also contribute a further £2m to help the project achieve its aims.

Carl Les, Deputy Leader of the County Council, said:

“This is a massive step forward in our aim to establish high-speed broadband accessibility for 100% of North Yorkshire by the end of 2017. With this extra funding, we will be able to penetrate to the more remote parts of our very rural county, to communities and businesses which hitherto had little hope of reaping the advantages and rewards of high-speed internet access.

Access to high-speed broadband is vitally important to the economic prosperity of the county, and this new funding means we will be able to ensure that it is virtually universally accessible. Further funding is available and will be released once the impact of this latest £8m has been assessed.”

It’s notable that the words “virtually universally accessible” are used to describe the roll-out of faster broadband connectivity and that further funding will be made available to achieve the 100% target, albeit only after the impact of their current allocation has been assessed.

ISPreview.co.uk notes that North Yorkshire was recently allocated an extra £4.6 million for the project by BDUK, which after today’s announcement means that another £1.6 million is still technically available for match-funding with the council, BT and others in the future (here).

As part of the update it’s also noted that almost 400 FTTC cabinets across the county have been upgraded or installed since the schemes launch last year and new street cabinets are apparently being added at the rate of more than 25 every month. At the start of last year BT estimated that it would need to upgrade 700 street cabinets in the county, thus bringing their FTTC/P network to a total of 365,000 local premises.