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.