Lancashire UK Hunts £3m from EU to Improve Rural Broadband

We might be set to leave the EU in March 2019 but the Lancashire County Council (LCC) in England has announced that they are seeking £3m from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) to help improve local broadband connectivity, which will be matched by £2m from the council (£5m total).

At present the existing and state aid supported Superfast Lancashire project with BT (Openreach) has already succeeded in helping to extend the local coverage of fixed line “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) capable networks – predominantly using a mix of FTTC and a little FTTP technology – to reach around 97% of the county. This has also been indirectly supported by commercial rollouts and community efforts, such as via the venerable B4RN.

The current contracts, which are also supported by the government’s Broadband Delivery UK programme, have already helped to reach an additional 136,000 premises and a further 11,283 should be put within reach of superfast connectivity by the end of 2018. Unfortunately upon completion this will still leave around 17,000 properties to suffer slower speeds.

Cllr Michael Green, Cabinet Member for Economic Development, said:

“For local businesses, broadband connects them with new customers and opens up new markets, and creates new jobs for local residents. It also reduces the difference between companies, giving them a more level playing field, regardless of where they’re based.

If our bid for funding is a success, it will bring increased coverage and increased speeds in harder to-reach and more isolated rural areas. These areas tend to be avoided by commercial providers due to cost, and are also more likely to have poor mobile phone 4G service connectivity.

While this scheme is mainly aimed at helping business, superfast broadband in rural areas provides important connections for people and access to services that they couldn’t find locally.”

A rough map of the areas that could benefit from this additional investment has been posted here and a related report to the cabinet on the plans for their bid are also available online, although the document doesn’t offer much detail.

The council will now need to conduct another Open Market Review (OMR) in order to establish the existing and planned level of superfast broadband coverage in the county. In the past they’ve had a rather nasty habit of shunning the good work being done by alternative network (AltNet) ISPs.

The outcome of the bid is likely to be known in Autumn 2018.