Dorset UK Reveals Phase 3 BT Superfast Broadband Rollout Areas

The Superfast Dorset project in central southern England has today announced the next batch of telephone exchange areas that will soon benefit from an upgrade to BT’s latest “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) network as part of the programmes third roll-out phase, which is expected to help another 9,000 local premises to connect.

The second phase of BT’s joint deployment with the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office and local Dorset County Council is currently set to run until around December 2014 (details), which means that phase three will predominantly take place from January 2015 and possibly run all the way up until the end of Spring 2015.

Paul Coles, BT’s South West Regional Manager, said:

“Fast fibre broadband is a vital part of the future development and success of Dorset. Already, more than 270,000 Dorset homes and businesses can get fibre broadband as a result of BT’s commercial programme and the Superfast Dorset roll-out. We’re more than four years into rolling out fibre broadband across the South West, whether through our commercial programme or with our public sector partners, so the production line is well established and primed to deliver even more over the coming years.”

Overall the project aims to cover 97% of the county with faster “fibre broadband” services by the end of 2016, although this figure drops slightly to 95% for those expected to receive “superfast” speeds of 25Mbps+.

Dorset – Phase 3 Fibre Rollout Areas
Blandford
Bourton
Child Okeford
Fontmell Magna
Gillingham
Hazelbury Bryan
Marnhull
Milton Abbas
Shaftesbury
Sturminster Newton

So far an additional 18,000 properties across the county have gained access to better broadband thanks to the project and the current hope is that this will reach the next milestone of 30,000 by Christmas 2014. As usual the project’s coverage map has already been updated to reflect the updated plan.