£2.7m Deal for FTTP Broadband to 2,500 Nottinghamshire Premises UPDATE

The state aid supported £30m Better Broadband for Nottinghamshire project has awarded another £2.7m contract to Openreach (BT), which will see the operator extend their 330Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to an additional 2,500 premises in the UK county.

So far the local project has already helped to extend FTTC/P based “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) to reach over 95% of local premises (here) and the existing extension contract aims to hit 98% by September 2018 (roughly 74,000 premises have already benefited); the county already claims to be at 97.5% coverage.

However last year the council adopted a new definition of 30Mbps+ for “superfast broadband” and confirmed that 16,505 premises across Nottinghamshire would, once contract 2 completes, be left unserved by a superfast capable network. At the time it was noted that 4,500 of these “already have speeds in excess 24Mbps but less than 30Mbps” and will thus be excluded from contract 3 (i.e. the jump isn’t enough of a “step change“).

Out of the circa 12,000 properties remaining, some 50% are within the two district areas of Newark & Sherwood and Bassetlaw. The good news is that this figure will now shrink to under 10,000 after BBfN announced a new deal for contract 3, which will see £1.3m of public funding being invested via the Nottinghamshire council and Broadband Delivery UK. Openreach has also matched this with £1.4m in private investment.

Reg Adair, Deputy Leader of Nottinghamshire County Council, said:

“Our latest investment in the county’s digital infrastructure will see Nottinghamshire pushing towards 100% broadband coverage, which is great news for residents, businesses and the local economy.

More than 50 per cent of homes and businesses in the areas where we have rolled out our scheme have already signed up for faster broadband, which clearly shows demand is there.

Broadband plays such a huge part in our lives these days, so good availability is one of the top priorities for people looking to buy a home, start a business or invest in an area. Nottinghamshire is already amongst the best areas for availability in the country and our on-going investment keeps us ahead of the rest.”

One other benefit of contract 3 is that Openreach has agreed to extend their network by using ultrafast FTTP broadband instead of slower FTTC (VDSL2) connectivity. Detailed planning and survey work for phase three is expected to get underway shortly, with the roll-out then due to begin in Spring 2019 (this will take around 6 months to complete).

As usual the upgrade won’t be automatic and customers will need to order a related FTTP package from their chosen ISP (e.g. BT, Zen Internet, iDNET etc.) in order to benefit.

UPDATE 4th Feb 2019

Somehow we missed the follow-up announcement in December 2018, which confirmed that a further £1m extension had been agreed that would add another 250 businesses and 800 residential properties to the Phase 3 roll-out (here).