Staffordshire UK Name First BDUK and BT Fibre Broadband Areas
The state aid supported £28m Superfast Staffordshire project in the West Midlands (England) has published a list of the first communities to benefit from their roll-out of BT’s superfast broadband (FTTC/P) technology, which will be extended to cover 95% of the local population by spring 2016.
Overall around 4,000 homes and businesses in Ash Bank, Clifton Campville, Kings Bromley, Marchington, Yarnfield and Yoxall will gain access to the service from April 2014, which is in addition to premises in Rugeley and Colton that were announced last year. Infill work (i.e. network extension in existing FTTC areas) will also take place in Burntwood, Heath Hayes and Penkridge.
The project, which is supported by the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme, ultimately hopes to upgrade 88,000 additional premises “in mainly rural areas” (note: the roll-out in other areas has predominantly tended to focus on sub-urban locations and larger towns). BT’s separate commercial deployment in the county will also bring FTTC/P lines to pass 370,000 premises by spring 2014.
The new scheme also requires BTOpenreach to lay more than 1 million metres of fibre optic cable and install around 500 new street-side cabinets. In addition, the “fibre broadband” network will actually cover 97% of local premises and as usual the 2% difference reflects those who won’t receive superfast speeds of 25Mbps+ but will still be able to get a slower FTTC line.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and Linkedin.
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At least 4 of the mentioned areas are not rural. Rugeley already had blanket Superfast via Virgin Media. Rugeley was already in BT commercial roll out. Infill in Rugeley has been paid for by the taxpayer. Truly rural areas have been ignored as usual.
Still waiting for my local street cabinet to be upgraded in Burton on Trent, although I have contacted the @superfaststaffs team who have told me it will be at some point this year.
Will finally be nice to stream digital content so im not forced to pay sky ridiculous amounts of money for digital television.
hi I live in needwood and I am supplied by kijoma wireless broadband. our original speed with bt was 0.5 to 1.5 mb at best we are already getting 40mb download speed.
The system is very stable & there is no line rental to pay. it does not use 40 year+ wires, Surely wireless broadband is cheaper & easier to deploy for rural broadband.
installation is £150 (compareable to bt) £18 per month for broadband no line rental. if like me your mobile signal is poor you can use voip for £6.00 per month
Isn’t Ash Bank Actually inside Stoke On Trent? Not one of the largest cities but there is no way it can classed as a Rural area.