Wiltshire and South Gloucestershire UK Broadband Rollout Update

The joint state aid supported £35.6 million project to roll-out BT’s “superfast broadband” (25Mbps+ FTTC/P) network to 91% of premises in Wiltshire by March 2016 and 94% of South Gloucestershire by the end of March 2015 has now helped to reach a total of 11,549 premises and more areas are due to be connected soon.

It’s been difficult to track the progress of this scheme because both areas have tended to only release bite-sized updates rather than a general roll-out plan. As a result we’ve decided to cobble together data from both sides of the deployment in order to give you a general overview of progress.

Wiltshire

The new service recently became available in Kington Langley, Bradenstoke, Purton and Broad Hinton, while further areas of Royal Wootton Bassett have also gone live and as a result some 6,000 premises (500 of which are businesses) can now access BT’s “fibre broadband” network. The current goal is to pass 10,000 premises by the end of June 2014.

So far most of the upgrades have focused on areas in and around Royal Wootton Bassett, Purton, Alderbury and Downton, while the next to benefit are expected to be in Kington Langley, Castle Combe, Broad Town, Broad Hinton and Whiteparish by summer 2014.

South Gloucestershire

Meanwhile the progress across South Gloucestershire appears to be good and is even running ahead of schedule. New FTTC street cabinets are already live in Wick and Pucklechurch, while the latest cabinets to go live and become ready for orders are in Badminton, Bradley Stoke, Barrs Court, Tormarton and Warmley. So far a total of 25 new street cabinets have gone live and BTOpenreach has laid over 44,951m of sub-duct and installed over 38,714m of fibre spine.

The local target in South Gloucestershire was to reach 5,000 premises by Summer 2014 and they’ve already managed to pass 5,549 homes and businesses. The next areas to benefit before the summer will include Lower Almondsbury, Olveston, Rudgeway, Thornbury and Tockington as originally planned.

After that it’s understood that the South Gloucestershire deployment will turn its attention towards premises in the Severn Beach area, which should start going live during the autumn 2014 period. Happily this council has produced a good roll-out progress page that also lists individual street cabinets (here), which is something that the Wiltshire side lacks.