Superfast Broadband Reaches the Lake District 9 Months Ahead of Schedule

The £51 million Connecting Cumbria scheme, which is rolling out BT’s superfast broadband (FTTC/P) network to over 93% of the county by the end of 2015 (last 7% to get 2Mbps+), has managed to upgrade the first part of the Lake District some 9 months ahead of schedule.

The first tentative deployment plan for Cumbria was released last June 2013 (here) and back then the first part of the Lake District National Park wasn’t expected to be reached until around the very end of 2014 (tranche 3). But a new project update and report has confirm that the related area of Windermere, specifically Bowness, has now been connected.

Apparently almost 2,000 local homes and businesses should now be able to access BT’s up to 80Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) lines and this will reach 4,000 premises once the area-specific deployment has completed over the coming weeks.

Unlike some Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) schemes the deployment in Cumbria also reveals precisely which street cabinets have been upgraded and they’ve even got a reasonable coverage map, although it did take a battle before one was finally released (here) and it’s still far from perfect.