North Lincolnshire Reveal Tentative Rollout Plan for Extra Broadband Cash

The state aid supported Northernlincs Broadband project appears to have revealed the first details about which areas can expect to benefit from the additional Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) cash injection of £1.18 million, which was first announced in February 2014.

At present the project, which aims to roll-out BT’s “high-speed fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) network to cover 92.5% of North and North East Lincolnshire in East England by June 2015, is funded to the tune of around £10 million by BT, the BDUK, North Lincolnshire Council and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

Last year an extra £1.2m was secured to help expand the project to another 5,000 homes and businesses, which included £500k from BDUK (here) and confusingly another £1.2m (£1.18m to be precise) was recently granted under BDUK’s Superfast Extension Programme (here); the latter still needs to be matched by BT and the local council.

The two separate boosts of £1.2m can confuse matters slightly and so today’s South Yorkshire Times article should be taken with a pinch of salt until we see a formal update from the project (it’s easy to get the extra funding mixed up as the goals for each are very similar). The article notes that this latest £1.2m from should benefit around 4,000 extra premises and many will be connected between 2015 and 2017.

Local MP, Andrew Percy, said:

“Broadband speeds for many local residents are truly appalling, which is why we are happy to have secured this funding. This is something I campaigned for in Parliament. The roll out will start in the next few weeks and will be completed in four phases, running to June 2015. However, some homes will be part of the 7.5 per cent which require other solutions.”

Phase One of the deployment, which has already begun, is expected to be completed by September 2014 (here) and the first areas to benefit from the next phase (between October 2014 and March 2015) now appear to include Axholme Central, Belton, Epworth and Sandtoft.

Confusingly we note that Epworth was already a part of phase one (it’s probably infill from existing coverage for phase 2 or they’ve delayed it) and the newspaper additionally states that Beltoft will then be connected between 2015 and 2017.