5300 Extra Premises in Cambridgeshire UK Set for FTTP Broadband

Some 5,300 additional homes and business in Cambridgeshire look set to benefit from Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) ultrafast broadband ISP technology. The news follows a new deal between the council and Openreach (BT), which will help to achieve their ambition for 99% “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) coverage by the end of 2020.

The related Connecting Cambridgeshire project, which is supported by public and private funding, has so far already helped to ensure that 97% of premises in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough can access a superfast broadband connection. On top of that around 11% are now within reach of an ultrafast “full fibre” network (above Ofcom’s most recent UK average of 7%).

Overall the project has helped to extend faster networks to over 126,000 premises in the region since it began several years ago, which has been focused upon areas that might otherwise not have been upgraded without state aid intervention (or at best they might have had to wait years longer for a better service).

Closing the final 3% gap will not be easy but it looks like gainshare (clawback) from earlier phases (i.e. public money returned for reinvestment via BT due to high service take-up) will now go toward supporting some of the new Phase 4 rollout contract with Openreach (BT), although exact figures aren’t stated.

Additional funding was also secured from the Government’s Rural Broadband Infrastructure fund and the EU.

Matt Bateman, Openreach’s Director for Infrastructure Development, said:

“We’ve already done a huge amount of great work across Cambridgeshire, in partnership with Cambridgeshire County Council, but we know there is more to do. This latest phase of work will help us make fast and reliable broadband available to many of the most rural parts of the county, which will make a huge difference to the lives of people living and working there.

None of this would be possible without our engineering workforce and our fantastic training facilities, such as the one here in Peterborough. Earlier this year we announced around 400 engineering jobs in the East of England, and it’s great to see so many new people wanting to join the country’s largest team of telecoms experts working to expand, upgrade, maintain and install services over our network.”

Councillor Ian Bates said:

“Cambridgeshire is a leading digital county and we know how important it is to have fast, reliable Internet access – wherever you are. It’s vital for our businesses to be able to compete, for our communities to thrive, and for people to access to council services online.

The County Council has ambitious plans to increase full fibre coverage as part of our commitment to delivering better connectivity and mobile services across the region. Using the latest Fibre to the Premise Technology means we can reach premises in rural areas to fill the gaps in coverage.”

The new deployment, which is being supported by the Government’s wider Building Digital UK programme (formerly Broadband Delivery UK), is set to take place over the next 2 years. Most consumers covered by the new phase should be able to order download speeds of up to around 300Mbps, although in some areas this will go up to 1Gbps.

The news will also support Cambridgeshire County Council’s recent plan to achieve over 30% coverage of Gigabit speed “full fibre” (FTTP / FTTH) broadband connectivity across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough by 2022 (here).