Cornwall UK Signs BT Contract for 99 Percent Superfast Broadband Cover

As expected the Cornwall Council in south west England has today signed a new £7.6m contract with BT to make “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) speeds available to 99% of the county within the next few years.

The current £132m Superfast Cornwall project, which is funded by £78.5m from BT and up to £53.5m from Europe (ERDF), has already deployed “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) services to 95% of the region (NOTE: around 89% are forecast to actually receive “superfast” speeds of 30Mbps+).

By comparison the new Superfast Extension Programme (SEP) contract forms part of the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK scheme and as such it will be funded by £2.96m from BDUK, £1.878m from the Cornwall Council, £1m via a Growth Deal, £500,000 from the Regional Growth Fund and £1.23m from BT.

As before the new project will be managed by the Cornwall Development Company (CDC), the arm’s length economic development company for Cornwall Council. This is of course not to be confused with the CDC anti-virus centre that failed to stop a zombie apocalypse in The Walking Dead.

Bill Murphy, Managing Director of NGA for BT, said:

“BT is delighted to be working with Cornwall Council to make superfast broadband available to thousands more homes and businesses in Cornwall. Through our joint investment with the EU and Cornwall Council in Superfast Cornwall, we have already delivered world-leading fibre broadband coverage for a rural area and this new programme will build upon that investment.

Our engineers will be overcoming new challenges in rolling out superfast broadband to some of Cornwall’s most remote and rural areas and a detailed planning phase will now commence before the building of the new network gets underway.”

Local councillor Julian German also confirmed that the project would bring superfast broadband access to “at least” 8,600 more Cornish premises across the region by early 2018. The above plan was first unveiled at the start of this year (here), although it’s taken a fair bit longer to get the contract sorted.