Black Country Broadband Scheme to Cover Extra 2,000 Premises via £1.2m Boost

The Black Country Broadband Project in England’s West Midlands, which is working with Openreach (BT) to make “superfast broadband” (FTTC/P) available to 98% of premises by Autumn 2017, has secured a further £1.2m from the Local Enterprise Partnership to boost its reach.

It’s worth pointing out that the Black Country skipped the first phase of the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK programme because the area (i.e. Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton) already had good coverage of “superfast” (24Mbps+) connectivity. However they later took part in the second BDUK phase and have recently managed to put an extra 40,000 premises within reach of FTTC/P based “fibre” connectivity.

So far, engineers from Openreach have installed nearly 200,000km of optical fibre and around 370 new street cabinets for the project, which is being supported by a £12.4 million investment from BT and around £6 million from the public purse. By completion the project hopes to have upgraded / installed 431 street cabinets and delivered 49,841 Total Homes Passed (THP).

The good news is that the Black Country LEP has now allocated an additional £1.2 million to the scheme, which should extend the service to another 2,000 premises (around £600 per premise).

Ninder Johal, Board Member for the Black Country LEP, said:

“This additional funding will help us to roll out fibre broadband even further than we’d originally planned, which is even more great news for Black Country residents and businesses.

The Black Country Broadband Project is making terrific progress, but we’re keen for more local people to take advantage and upgrade their broadband service, which they can do at little or no extra cost, to ensure they don’t get left behind in a world where so many things rely on us having access to fast, reliable broadband.”

The project appears to be keeping to its original target, although we do note that the completion date has slipped slightly from June to Autumn 2017. However as a result of today’s news Openreach (BT) is forecasting that the region will see “superfast fibre broadband” availability climb to 99.43% of homes and businesses across Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton by the end of 2017.

The additional £1.2m appears to have been extracted from the LEP’s Growing Places Fund, which enables organisations to apply for funding to invest in capital projects, including land, property and infrastructure. A moderate slice of the original project also came from the same place.