South Gloucestershire Council (SGC) has announced the signing of a deal that will bring improved internet speeds to at least 9.4% of premises across the district.
The Council, in partnership with Wiltshire Council, has agreed the £35.6 million project with BT, who were announced as the preferred bidder for the project last November.
£4.6 million of the money will come from the Government (through its BDUK agency), £15.5 million from Wiltshire Council, £2 million from South Gloucestershire Council, £12.8 million from BT and £0.74 million from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
Revised data published today shows that 83% of premises in South Gloucestershire are expected to have access to superfast broadband through commercial investment by 2015. The state-aided project announced today will benefit most of the remaining 17% (19,700 premises), by guaranteeing a minimum broadband speed of 2Mbps to all of them and bringing superfast speeds (> 24Mbps) to between 8,120 and 12,752 of them (corresponding to “minimum” and “expected” district-wide superfast coverage targets of 90% and 94%).
The Journal estimates that around 3,000 homes in Bradley Stoke could benefit from the investment, these being the homes and business that are served from the BT telephone exchange at Almondsbury (01454 numbers) and lie outside the Virgin Media cable area.
For those on 0117 numbers, BT is currently in the process of upgrading its Filton Exchange (announced in April 2010), and the latest projections are that subscribers will be able to order superfast services from 30th June 2013.
The bad news contained in today’s announcement is that the estimated completion date for the state-aided work has slipped to May 2016, an extension of just over a year on the target date of April 2015 announced by SGC last February.
Six months of the slippage is attributed to delays in obtaining state-aid approval from the EU but no explanation for the further seven month delay has been offered.
Following the contract signing, there will now be a period of “planning and surveying”, with work expected to start on the ground during the autumn.
SGC says the work will be carried out in five “phases”, with each phase focusing on the geographical area around a set of telephone exchanges, however no detail of the phases or areas has been released.
SGC Councillors for Bradley Stoke South, John Ashe and Robert Jones, commented:
“We very much welcome this announcement as faster broadband is something we have been campaigning on for many years.”
“Now that we know the contract has been signed, what we really want to know, along with so many other Bradley Stoke residents, is when exactly we will see the improvements and where our town sits in the programme’s roll-out phases.”
SGC Councillor for Bradley Stoke North, Ben Walker, added:
“It’s great news that most of Bradley Stoke will benefit from the BDUK funding after a long cross-party campaign. Thanks must go to The Journal who were instrumental in raising the profile of the poor internet connection speeds. It’s disappointing that it took this pressure and Government money for BT to act; it was always their responsibility.”
In a BT consumer demand survey conducted in December 2010, the Almondsbury exchange received the 19th-highest level of support across the country for the introduction of superfast broadband (from 2,495 eligible exchanges) but despite the result, BT subsequently failed to include the exchange in its commercial rollout programme that is now drawing to an close.
Photo: Jack Lopresti MP, Town Councillors and local business leaders show support for the Better Broadband campaign in November 2010.
Related links:
- Better Broadband Campaign (The Journal)
- Broadband in South Gloucestershire (SGC)
2016!! What a joke!! #Headsgone
SH,
You mean 94% not 9.4%?
Why has the word “most” been used here?
“It’s great news that most of Bradley Stoke will benefit from the BDUK funding”
I presume this means that some areas of Bradley Stoke will still not get the broadband they are expecting?
A little bit of digging found that South Gloucester have a map that shows the areas that will benefit, but even with this its not clear how much of Bradley Stoke is covered.
http://www.southglos.gov.uk/Documents/Intervention%20areas%20Wilts%20and%20SGlos.pdf
@Matt K: No, 9.4% is correct – as the minimum percentage of premises in South Gloucestershire that will be helped through the state aid programme.
As explained in para 4, 83% of homes are going to get superfast broadband through commercial means, so that leaves a maximum of 17% to be helped by the state.
The Council has said it will help bring superfast broadband to a minimum of 90% of the district – so it is guaranteeing to benefit at least 7% (90% – 83%) on that score.
But it is also saying that it will bring the 9.4% of premises that currently get less than 2Mbps up to that minimum speed.
That information is contained on the Broadand page on the SGC website (sorry, I should have stated this explicitly in the article):
“Approximately 9.4% premises cannot access at least a 2Mbps service across South Gloucestershire. By the end of this project all premises will have an access line speed of this minimum service, with most getting speeds well in excess of this.”
The higher of those two figures (7% for superfast and 9.4% for 2Mbps) represents the minimum number of premises that will benefit from the state aid.
In practice the number helped is likely to be higher than 9.4% but that is the theoretical minimum.
Hope that makes sense.
@John: Well done for finding the (12MB!) PDF map on the SGC Broadband page.
Unfortunately, it’s too imprecise to show the exact areas that will be helped. I have requested a better one from SGC.
… and, of course, it doesn’t show whether the “intervention” for any particular area is to be to provide minimum (2 Mbps) or superfast (>24 Mbps) broadband.
@SH – might be good if you could use your influence to get an answer as to whether the non-Virgin areas of Bradley Stoke will all get FTTC. They may not be able to give timings yet but surely they must know whether this will happen. I can’t believe they would have entered into a contract not having a good idea on this given the size of the problem in Bradley Stoke.
@Dave P: I wouldn’t hold out much hope of finding that out until the “planning and surveying” is complete.
However, as mentioned in a previous article, our local MP, Jack Lopresti, seems to have more knowledge of what is to come. He recently told one resident that “BS32 is assured highspeed broadband”. See the tweet here: http://bit.ly/WINSlM
BT announce more exchanges, again ignoring Almondsbury, but hint future exchanges will be enabled by BDUK.
http://www.btplc.com/News/Articles/Showarticle.cfm?ArticleID=23F28D29-F8B5-4EC0-A3F8-04C1FEA340F1
Update from BBC Bristol today:
Faster broadband for South Gloucestershire residents
This sounds good, shame there are no details on when.
I am still wary of the warning that areas that already have, or will have fast broadband by another means by 2015 will be excluded. My street does not have cable, but the adjacent street does ….
Finally, it is a real eye opener that Almondsbury exchange is linked with exchanges that are a fraction of its size. It shows how BT proritised the rollout of FTTC.
Is there anything new in the BBC article..? Or is it just a rehash of what we already knew?