The Superfast Staffordshire project with Openreach (BT) claims to have succeeded in its original Phase 2 contract goal, which aimed to make fixed line FTTC/P superfast broadband (24Mbps+) networks available to order by 95% of premises before the end of 2017 (c.97% in terms of the raw “fibre” footprint).
So far the scheme, which is supported by the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK programme, has enabled around 74,000 premises (homes and businesses) in Staffordshire (England) to be put within reach of a superfast broadband network (out of 80,937 contracted under the Phase 1 + 2 deals for “superfast” speeds).
The above figure rises to more than 477,000 when combined with commercial roll-outs by private sector businesses (e.g. Openreach and Virgin Media) and take-up in related BDUK areas has recently increased to 39.7% (June 2017). All of this has been funded by an investment of around £32 million (£8.06m from local councils, £9.12m from BDUK and £14.77m from BT).
Mark Winnington, Council Leader for Economic Growth, said:
“Reaching this important milestone in the run-up to Christmas and ahead of the Government’s national target date is a terrific achievement and shows our commitment to make this important technology available to as many parts of Staffordshire as quickly as possible.
We’re using a combination of technologies and co-funding solutions to ensure even residents and businesses in the smallest, most remote parts of our county have access to this essential technology.”
Steve Haines, Openreach’s MD for NGA, said:
“The broadband landscape across Staffordshire has been transformed in recent years so that the great majority of households and businesses can now get superfast speeds. And we are most certainly not stopping there. We’re committed to going further with superfast and ultrafast broadband.
Increasingly high-speed broadband is no longer a ‘nice to have’ – it is a ‘must have’. Reaching this important milestone at this busy time of the year is particularly good news for people wanting to use the internet more than usual for online shopping and ‘click and collect’ services.”
As usual it’s important to point out that the 95% figure (this is up from 70% in 2013) is an estimate and real-world experiences can still differ due to various reasons, such as slow wifi, poor home wiring, local cabinets being full to capacity and general network congestion etc. In addition, the upgrade is not automatic and you have to order the faster service in order to benefit.
A quick look at Thinkbroadband‘s most recent projection, which tends to take a more cautious approach in its data analysis (we like that), puts the figure slightly lower on 94.06%. This is roughly in keeping with other BDUK projections that tend to be roughly 1 percentage point ahead of TBB’s estimates. We believe that, using the Government’s more optimistic gauge, the national UK coverage target of 95% has also now been hit.
However the work in Staffordshire does not stop at 95% and a £1.7m extension deal, which was signed in June 2017, has already confirmed that the next “superfast” target is 96%+ coverage by the end of 2018 (here). The first premises to benefit under this additional deployment will go live from next Summer 2018 and the existing rollout is also still on-going.
UPDATE:
The Superfast Staffordshire team have noted to us in the comments that the 94.06% TBB superfast coverage figure refers to Staffordshire only and does not incorporate the City of Stoke, but you do get to a little over 95% once stoke is factored into the data.
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