The South Yorkshire focused Digital Region project, which aims to bring guaranteed fibre optic FTTC based broadband internet speeds of 25Mbps or more to 97% of businesses and homes in the region, has today been officially joined by Barnsley Council.

The council signed a 5 year contract with Digital Region worth over £1 Million, which will result in the network being extended to cover Council buildings and Barnsley schools. Barnsley Could is just one of several partners in the £90 Million EU funded project, which includes Yorkshire Forward, Sheffield Council, Barnsley Council, Rotherham Council and Doncaster Council.


The network itself claims to be carrier-class and will eventually reach 1.2m people in 500,000 homes and 40,000 businesses. It uses an almost identical, but separate, method to BT's next generation Fibre-to-the-Cabinet ( FTTC ) rollout. Fibre optic cable is used to link with street cabinets and the service itself is then delivered into homes over existing copper wire via VDSL2 .

The first Council building to switch over will be the Town Hall in November 2010 and the first schools to connect will be the new Advanced Learning Centres at Carlton and the Dearne also in November. The Network migration will take approximately two years to complete and will then generate savings of over £100k per year when finished. Credit to Thinkbroadband for spotting the news first.