Thousands More in Leicestershire UK to Get Full Fibre Broadband

The Leicestershire County Council has today announced a £2.7 million extension to their existing Superfast Leicestershire project with Openreach (BT), which means that “thousands” of extra homes and businesses will soon gain access to a Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) ISP network.

At present the existing project has already helped to extend “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) networks to cover around 96%+ of local premises (rising to 99% in Leicestershire city). The new contract extension will thus aim to connect some of the remaining properties in parts of north-west Leicestershire, Charnwood, Hinckley & Bosworth and Blaby.

Apparently building work on the new network extension is due to start by the end of 2019 but sadly today’s announcement doesn’t confirm precisely how many will benefit, although the level of funding and technology involved suggests that it’s probably more or less than 2,000 premises.

By comparison the programme has so far already helped to reach an additional 75,000+ premises with faster connectivity, albeit mostly using the slower Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) technology.

Trevor Pendleton, Leicestershire County Council, said:

“The world is rapidly changing, ensuring that Leicestershire is equipped with the latest digital technology will drive economic growth and innovation.

“To make sure that Leicestershire residents and businesses can take advantage of the latest technological developments, local governments are relied on to invest in future-proof infrastructure. The full-fibre solutions we are delivering into people’s homes will become one of the many reasons Leicestershire is great place to live and work.

The aim of the council is to continue this programme until every resident in Leicestershire can access superfast speeds. We remain committed to every household that is still to be upgraded to fibre broadband and I look forward to attending many more of these launches.”

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

“We’ve already done a huge amount of work across Leicestershire, in partnership with Leicestershire County Council, and we’re delighted to be going even further. This latest phase of work will help us make fast and reliable broadband available to many of the most rural parts of the county, and there is no doubt it’ll make a huge difference to people living and working there.”

We tried to find some extra details on this extension from recent council documents but came up empty, although we did spot a recent but vague note about how the previous Phase 3 rollout had suffered a delay: “The year-end position shows slippage of £2.6m due to delays on phase 3 of the Rural Broadband Scheme. A longer than expected open market review stage of the procurement, due to additional information being requested from a potential supplier to support their response, has led to the delay. This was necessary to ensure the procurement met the requirements of the Broadband Programme Authority (BDUK).”