Hampshire UK’s Rural Superfast Broadband Project Concludes

The Hampshire County Council (HCC) in England has concluded its state aid supported Superfast Broadband Programme (SFBB) and published a new report that summarises its “achievements and lessons learnt“. Overall, the project helped to extend superfast (30Mbps+) speeds from 80% in 2012 to 97.8% today, exceeding its 95% target.

The programme formed part of the original Building Digital UK (BDUK) framework, which between 2013 and 2022 helped to lift the coverage of fixed “superfast broadband” ISP networks – predominantly with support from Openreach (BT) – to reach an additional 115,000 premises (via over 1 million metres of new fibre optic cables). The focus was on areas that might have otherwise not been covered by commercial networks or had to wait years longer.

The full report also notes that the £2m Hampshire County Council Gigabit Voucher Top Up scheme(s) will help to deliver Full Fibre Gigabit Broadband to another 5,407 premises in 44 villages, which could in the future be increased to a further 10,465 premises with continued support.

Across both phases of the programme the County Council has invested a total of £12.95m, while District and Borough Councils contributed £1.25m, the UK government (BDUK) invested £14.2m and BT contributed £7.6m – making for an overall total of around £36m when considering both public and private investment.

Councillor Rob Humby, Leader of Hampshire County Council, said:

“Being able to connect digitally is vital for so many reasons in our day-to-day lives – for things like making health appointments, staying connected with friends and family, working from home, and managing finances or online banking. More and more, we are becoming a fully digital society, socially, domestically and commercially so it is really good to know that our £12.9 million investment, together with that from central Government, the county’s borough and district councils and our commercial partner, Openreach, has been well placed and very well spent.

I’m ambitious for all of Hampshire to have equal access to higher broadband speeds, and there’s still work to be done to improve speeds for around 20,000 Hampshire properties (the remaining 2.2%) who are still only accessing speeds below 24Mbps. This has to be a priority and I’m reassured that it looks set to be realised as part of Government’s national Project Gigabit initiative.”

As above, the report notes that there are still around 20,000 premises unable to access “superfast” speeds, although it is expected that some of the 2.2% of properties not covered by the original programme will be upgraded to full fibre via the Government’s newer Project Gigabit programme.

Project Gigabit will bring £118m of direct investment into the County, with more to follow. The programme for Hampshire is currently divided into two lots and contracts have already been awarded:

a. Lot 27 A is a £14m investment to bring gigabit broadband to 10,000 properties in New Forest, awarded to Wessex Internet (here).

b. Lot 27 B is a £104m investment to bring gigabit broadband to 75,000 properties across Hampshire, awarded to CityFibre (here).

A further report on the County Council’s wider approach to Hampshire’s Digital Place Strategy (including its role in Project Gigabit) will be brought to Cabinet in the New Year and you can see a summary of superfast broadband coverage by district below.