£4.15m Broadband Boost for Rural Cambridgeshire and Peterborough

The Connecting Cambridgeshire project, which is working alongside Openreach (BT) to help extend fixed line “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) coverage from around 96% today to 99% of premises in the UK county by the end of 2020 (here), has secured a £4.15m funding boost to help connect rural businesses.

The extra funding appears to come from the UK Government’s Rural Broadband Infrastructure Scheme (RBIS) and is intended to help around 700 remote rural businesses (SMEs) in areas where superfast broadband services are not currently available.

We should clarify that this latest boost is on top of the recent £5.6m investment by the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority and £4m from the Government’s new Local Full Fibre Networks (LFFN) programme, which were both recently confirmed as part of the region’s new digital strategy (here).

Cllr Ian Bates, Chair of the Economy and Environment Committee, said:

“It is fantastic news that our Connecting Cambridgeshire digital programme has been allocated just over £4m Government funding for rural businesses. This additional funding will support our existing plans to deliver superfast broadband access to over 99% of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough by the end of 2020, and will help to ensure that very rural locations do not miss out on connectivity, which is vital for growth and jobs.”

Lord Gardiner, Rural Affairs Minister, said:

“Rural areas should not be left behind in the connectivity slow lane, missing out on the opportunities high speed broadband can bring. The funding made available through the Rural Broadband Infrastructure Scheme champions our countryside communities and businesses by opening up access to broadband of at least 30 Megabits per second, in some of the most hard to reach areas.”

The original announcement was made over a week ago but we didn’t receive a press release and are thus only now becoming aware of it. Sadly no further details have been released to help clarify how the money itself will be spent or which technologies and suppliers will be used.