West Sussex UK Confirm Phase 3 Areas for Superfast Broadband Upgrades

The West Sussex Better Connected project in England, which is working to make BT’s “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) network available to around 98% of local homes and businesses by Spring 2016 (note: 90% will get “superfast” speeds of 24Mbps+), has announced the next set of Phase Three roll-out areas.

So far more than 80 new green roadside FTTC street cabinets have been installed in nearly 30 communities across West Sussex, which has helped an additional 15,000 premises to gain faster Internet access. The current aim is to help a total of 44,000 premises to be put within reach of the new fibre service by the completion date, although this could rise with future funding commitments.

West Sussex’s Phase 3 Areas – Early 2015 Onwards

Ardingly
Balcombe
Bolney
Bury
Eastergate
Faygate
Handcross
Horsham
Pound Hill
Sharpthorne
Scaynes Hill
Slinfold Sutton
Warninglid

As usual BTOpenreach’s telecoms engineers will also be revisiting some areas to “assess solutions for premises that need alternative fibre technologies” (infill); these include Bosham, Billingshurst, Bolney, Burgess Hill, Faygate, Findon, Horsham, Lower Beeding, Partridge Green, Petworth, Pound Hill, Rusper and Warninglid.

Readers might recall from our June 2014 update that one of the “alternative fibre technologies” being considered is a full ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband solution, which is being examined for potential deployment in parts of Ashington, Billingshurst, Petworth, Pulborough and Sutton. Other solutions like Fibre-to-the-Remote-Node (FTTrN) may also be considered, although we’ve had no official confirmation of that for West Sussex.. yet.

The West Sussex County Council is investing £6.26m into the project and BT is contributing £7.6m, with £6.26m coming from the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) budget.