The Northamptonshire County Council (NCC) claims that the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office has today given their official approval to a £4,080,000 Local Broadband Plan (LBP), which seeks to rollout superfast internet speeds of 30Mbps to "every [100%] household in the county" by 2017 (90% by 2015).

The move is significant because Northamptonshire's project is only the fifth to receive the government's green light nationally, which means that their allocated BDUK broadband funding can now be unlocked (once the council has completed the necessary procurement).

NCC expects to match the funding with its own money to help "kick-start the process". Private companies will also be invited to bid and thus match the public funding with their own investment.


It is scheduled that the procurement programme will start in May 2012 with the authority inviting tenders from companies and it's anticipated that work could begin by the end of 2012. A new website called Superfastnorthamptonshire has been setup to help keep local informed about the projects progress.

The total package to cover the "white areas" (mostly rural homes with poor or no broadband) is worth roughly £34 million.