Worcestershire UK Achieve 90% Coverage of Superfast Broadband

The Superfast Worcestershire (England) project appears to have successfully completed its original contract with Openreach (BT), which has now extended their FTTC/P based “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) network to 90% of the county (i.e. 94% “fibre” coverage inc. sub-24Mbps areas).

So far the state aid (Broadband Delivery UK) supported scheme has helped to extend the “fibre broadband” network out to an additional 59,788 homes and businesses (49,737 if you only look at those able to benefit from 24Mbps+ speeds), which has also required around 430km worth of new fibre optic cable to be laid.

Paul Bimson, BT’s Regional Partnership Director, said:

“Superfast Worcestershire is a multi-million pound engineering programme which is progressing extremely well. When combined with BT’s commercial roll-out, more than 240,000 premises across Worcestershire are now able to access faster fibre broadband.

Every day we’re seeing how this technology is making a positive impact on local businesses and households. Whether it’s firms like Carver Knowles and other businesses on Strensham Business Park, people working from home, families using the internet for education or leisure – everything you do online is faster and better with fibre broadband.”

The second Superfast Extension Programme (SEP) contract is already underway, which will expand the coverage to another 8,000 premises by Autumn 2017 and this should ensure that around 94-95% of the county can order a 24Mbps+ capable connection if they so desire.

We should point out that some funding has also been set aside for a third contract, which came after BT confirmed that a mix of clawback and deployment savings would probably return £3m for reinvestment in an expanded roll-out (here). But at present the local authority is conducting an Open Market Review (OMR) that only seems to propose a procurement value of £2.2m.