South Gloucestershire UK Extends BT Fibre Broadband Rollout

A local campaign has succeeding in extending the reach of BT’s “superfast broadband” (25Mbps+ FTTC/P) network in South Gloucestershire, which will now be expanded into a number of additional locations on its way to reaching 94% of the county by the end of March 2015.

Apparently the campaign, which involved local MPs and residents, has managed to secure additional rural coverage for Hawkesbury Upton, Horton, Marshfield and some other as yet unconfirmed areas. On top of that it looks like this work, which should benefit roughly 1,000 extra premises, will take place within the existing timescale.

Cotswold Edge Councillor, Sue Hope, said that it had been a “long and hard fight to get the Council and BT to stand up to their responsibilities and stop treating rural residents like second class citizens.” But the campaign said it wouldn’t stop until all of the other notspots and slowspots are filled.

In fairness BT has also managed to extend their rollout in other Broadband Deliver UK (BDUK) areas, usually as a result of Openreach’s engineers realising that some communities could be covered more easily than initially predicted (note: this is separate from the new £250m BDUK investment). However this isn’t true everywhere and must be equally weighed against the fact that other locations may prove to be more difficult to reach.