UPDATE West Yorkshire and BT Agree Extended Fibre Broadband Deal

The Superfast West Yorkshire project in England, which is aiming to roll-out BT’s “high-speed fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) services to 97% of local homes and businesses by the end of September 2015 (708,000 total premises), has signed a new £13m deal to extend this to another 28,000 premises.

Interestingly the new Superfast Extension Programme (SEP) contract states that the aim now appears to represent 98% coverage of “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) speeds by the end of 2018, although this could easily still represent just the raw fibre footprint (we are checking). Otherwise the funding split is £6.89m from the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK programme and £6.1m from BT.

A number of areas, including parts of York and Kirklees, are set to benefit. Hopefully the York deployment won’t conflict too much with the joint TalkTalk, Cityfibre and Sky Broadband roll-out of ultrafast 1000Mbps FTTH/P services in the area (most of that is urban focused and so public funding isn’t usually allowed for those).

Ed Vaizey, Digital Economy Minister, said:

“Our rollout of superfast broadband in West Yorkshire has already reached more than 60,000 homes and businesses. This new deal means another 28,000 premises will also be able to access superfast speeds and will provide an additional boost to the local economy.”

David Green, West Yorkshire Combined Authority Member, said:

“Along with physical transport infrastructure, high-speed broadband is vital in providing the links businesses need to achieve growth and create new jobs and to help residents access the benefits of high speed internet, West Yorkshire Combined Authority has a goal of achieving 100% superfast broadband coverage for the whole of Leeds City Region.

I am pleased that by having a clear vision of what we wanted to achieve and working closely with BT to achieve it, we have found ways to provide crucial high-speed internet access to places that otherwise would not be served.”

The Superfast West Yorkshire project has already helped to reach over 64,000 premises across the intervention area, which is running towards a final project total of 80,000.

The actual number of households/businesses taking up superfast broadband in the intervention area also reached 8068 in March 2015 and statistics issued by BT indicated that overall take-up percentage in the intervention area had risen to 12.6%, up from 10.5% in January.

UPDATE 12:17pm

It looks as if the local project needs to update their press statement and website. A spokesperson for BT has just confirmed to ISPreview.co.uk that the “98% target refers to fibre not just >24Mbps” coverage (i.e. it includes areas that will receive sub-24Mbps speeds and so the actual ‘superfast’ % should be a few points lower).