Northamptonshire UK Finish First Superfast Broadband Rollout Contract

The first contract for the Superfast Northamptonshire project in England, which aimed to make BTOpenreach’s superfast broadband (FTTC/P) network available to about 90% of premises by the end of 2015, has officially completed.

Originally the first roll-out contract was actually spoken of as aiming to achieve its coverage goal by September 2015, thus we’re unclear why the local media (here) and project website are both suggesting that it finished “3 months early“. The coverage target itself appears to have actually been achieved in September, so it’s at the very least on-target.

Superfast Northamptonshire Progress Update (14th December 2015)

Number of premises passed by fibre [FTTC]: 61,000
Number of premises now able to take up superfast broadband: 53,940 (end Sept 2015)
Number of fibre cabinets or structures deployed: 308
Delivery progress stage 1: 100% complete (delivered 3 months early)
Delivery progress stage 2: due to commence early 2016 (planning and survey work starting ahead of schedule late 2015)

Naturally the work doesn’t stop and Northamptonshire has already signed a second Broadband Delivery UK based Superfast Extension Programme (SEP) contract with BT (here), which will benefit an additional 20,465 homes and businesses by September 2018. Parts of rural villages including Dingley, Loddington, Welford and Rockingham will be among those to benefit from the forthcoming expansion.

Andre Gonzalez De Savage, Councillor for Strategic Infrastructure, said:

“Northamptonshire County Council has an ambitious target to see superfast broadband available across the county by the end of 2017. We are well on the way towards this goal but there are many people who need faster broadband right now.

We are investing with Government in the national Satellite Scheme to ensure that those people in the county suffering the worst broadband speeds have an opportunity to access faster services whilst our Superfast Northamptonshire project continues to deliver.”

It’s worth pointing out that private sector telecoms providers, such as Virgin Media, Gigaclear and of course BT, are separately expected to provide access to superfast broadband for almost three quarters of Northamptonshire premises (around 230,000) by 2017.

Interestingly Councillor Andre Gonzalez De Savage suggests that the current contracts will deliver superfast broadband (24Mbps+) across the county by 2017, yet the first two contracts should achieve about 95% coverage and maybe a little extra. More funding will probably still be needed to fill any gaps.

UPDATE 12th January 2016

Apparently the reason for Superfast Northamptonshire‘s 3 months early remark is because the original contract, signed in March 2013, was for a THP (total homes passed) deployment of 56,065 premises (48,660 would be able to access above 24Mbps). Back then the superfast element of this contract was due to complete by Sept 2015, with the basic broadband (2Mbps for all) element completing by December 2015.

However since then the project has made 2 extensions to the contract (both in 2014) to deliver more, which upped targets to a THP of 60,950 (53,400 covered by 24Mbps+).  These contract extensions also extended the implementation plan timescales to March 2016, which is why they’ve reported it as finishing 3 months ahead of schedule.

We also understand that the new Superfast Extension Programme (SEP) contract has now been accelerated, so it will complete one year earlier by December 2017.