The Lancashire County Council (LCC) appears to be steaming ahead with its own £32 million Local Broadband Plan (LBP) after an allegedly "exhaustive procurement process" officially selected BT to help 97% of the county get superfast broadband ISP speeds of over 30Mbps by 2014; one year ahead of the national UK target.

Lancashire's Public Sector Funding Breakdown:
• £10.8m from Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK)
• £16.5m from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)
• £4.7m from Lancashire County Council (LCC)

Some £500,000 of the money will also be set aside to help the last 3% receive access to download speeds of at least 2Mbps (Universal Service Commitment). Another £3m will be used to help small and medium sized businesses get the best out of superfast broadband.

The investment, which is expected to be matched by cash from BT (this will be in addition to its £2.5bn strong pot), will be targeted at approximately one third of the county where there are currently no existing or future commercial plans for a superfast service (at least none according to the council).



Critics of BDUK's process often fear that the bulk of investment will end up going towards BT instead of alternative operators, such as Fujitsu's Open Access Wholesale Network (OAWN) project (here). At this stage it's still too early to be sure how things will progress more nationally, although today's news and other recent developments (here) will surely fuel concerns.

At the same time BT has always been a serious player and one most likely to win a sizeable chunk of the fund, especially given BDUK's sometimes questionably strict criteria for entry (small ISPs = no). Thankfully rural Lancashire still looks likely to benefit from alternative projects like those from B4RN (here) and Fibrestream (here).

UPDATE 1:29pm

Small correction. BT informs that its private sector investment will be in addition to their £2.5bn money and not part of it.