A £27.67 million project to transform broadband speeds for thousands more businesses and residents across Derbyshire was announced today
Derbyshire County Council, which has spearheaded the Digital Derbyshire programme, has signed a contract with BT to make fibre broadband available to a further 88,000 premises across the county, bringing access to more than 95 per cent of homes and businesses by 2016. The project builds on BT’s existing commercial fibre deployment in the county.
The project aims to ensure that the remaining premises will also see an uplift in speed and deliver a minimum of 2Mbps or more to almost all homes and businesses, fast enough to use online services such as BBC iPlayer.
The council chose BT to work in partnership on its Digital Derbyshire programme after an extensive procurement process using the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) framework.
BT is contributing £12.87 million to the project while Derbyshire County Council is contributing £4.9 million. A further £7.4 million is coming from the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) funds as well as £2.5 million from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
Openreach, BT’s local network division, will now begin the work on the ground with engineers surveying locations around the county and analysing the best way to roll out the network and to identify which areas of the county will be upgraded for fibre broadband. There will be a phased approach to the roll-out, with the first areas predicted to be upgraded in 2014.
Fibre to the Cabinet will be the main technology deployed. This can deliver wholesale downstream speeds of up to 80Mbps, and upstreamspeeds of up to 20Mbps. Fibre to the Premises technology − delivering ultra-fast wholesale speeds of up to 330Mbps − will also be deployed in certain areas and will be available on demand throughout the fibre footprint should local businesses want the ultra-fast speeds it offers.
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