Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire Detail Phase2 FTTC Broadband Rollout

The CSW Broadband project, which in February signed an extended deal to bring BTOpenreach’s “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) network to “nearly” 94% of Warwickshire, Solihull and Coventry in England, has today revealed the first areas to benefit and an improved time-scale.

The original contract 1, which should make the superfast FTTC/P network available to 91% of the area by spring 2016, has already reached 43,000 extra properties via 231 new street cabinets and is thus technically about to complete (the goal was around 40,000 premises).

By comparison the first announcement for contract 2 predicted a completion date for the new 94% target (14,600 additional premises) of late 2018/19, although we’re very pleased to see that this has now been “pulled forward to 2017.” It’s worth pointing out that the premises passed figure increases to 17,000+ when you include sub-24Mbps “fibre broadband” coverage.

Under the plan Openreach will begin installing the new network in January 2016 and the first premises will be able to order the service from Summer 2016, reaching 3,600 additional homes and businesses by the end of 2016 and the majority of the remainder by the end of 2017.

We now also know that the first locations to benefit from contract 2 (part 1) will include premises in Aston Cantlow, Avon Dassett, Edge Hill, Farnborough, Fenny Compton, Great Alne, Little Kineton, Norton Lindsey, Oxhill, Radway, Ullenhall and Upper Tysoe.

Bill Murphy, BT’s MD of Next Generation Access, said:

“Our project teams are working hard to make fibre broadband available to as many communities as possible, as quickly as possible, especially in the harder to reach parts of Warwickshire.

Every day we’re seeing how this technology is changing the way people communicate and do business for the better. Whether it’s families trying to connect different devices to the internet at the same time, or firms needing to share information with their customers or suppliers – everything is easier and quicker with fibre broadband.

CSW Broadband builds on BT’s commercial roll-out which has already made high-speed broadband available to nearly 300,000 premises across Warwickshire and Coventry.”

One wonderful advantage of the CSW scheme is that they also offer a detailed street cabinet based roll-out plan via their website (here), which shows the new roll-out locations for contract 2 from January 2016 onwards. Only a few of the other local authority schemes provide a similar level of information.