Shropshire County Council are working in partnership with BT and BDUK to deploy fibre optic broadband, and improve internet access, across the Shropshire region over the next 3 years in a deal worth £24.6m. However, in what appears to be an indication of a further divide between the two local authorities in the region premises that fall under the Telford and Wrekin local authority will not be included in the project.

BDUK, Broadband Delivery UK, the project team within the Department of Culture, Media, and Sport, aim to have superfast broadband to at least ninety percent of premises in the UK and to set the minimum throughput of standard broadband to 2 Mbps.

Under the project England is pencilled in for £294.8m of funding with around 6,603,443 premises (an average cost of £44.64 per premise). Of this the Shropshire region (excluding Telford and Wrekin) has been allocated £7.84m to cover around 145,000 premises at a cost of around £54 per premise.

The Shropshire project, co-ordinated by Connecting Shropshire, brings a joint investment from Shropshire Council to match the £7.84m from BDUK (Broadband Delivery UK) to around £16m with the remaining £8.6m invested from BT.

 

Enough Fibre To Connect Shropshire to the Swiss Alps

Brendan Dick, managing director of the BT Regions team, said, “During the next three years we’ll be rolling out enough fibre to connect Shropshire to the Swiss Alps.  This is a physically and technically challenging project.  I was delighted to be there last Friday sharing some insights on how we approach fibre deployment, and what work is already underway.”

BT Open Reach vans are set to be a familiar sight in the region as over 1,000 Km of fibre is expected to be installed focusing on fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) with some hard to reach areas also benefiting from fibre to the premises (FTTP). Fibre replaces the copper wire that had traditionally been used for phone lines and replaces electrical currents with light. Whilst the fibre cables are not as robust as copper cables the difference is throughput of information is considerable.

As part of the fibre to the cabinet roll-out the project aims to provide over 130,000 premises in the region with broadband download speeds of up to 80 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 20 Mbps. Some premises, benefiting from fibre to the premises, could see speeds of up to 330 Mbps.

Overall, the UK is way down in the global table of broadband speeds so the sight of open reach vans in the region indicates a very real commitment to improve overall connectivity. The UK Government has made a commitment “to deliver the best superfast broadband network in Europe” according to the Department for Culture, Media & Sport.

Telford & Wrekin Not To Benefit From Project

Telford and Wrekin are not covered by the project as the local authority looks to achieve savings of £40m across the region by 2014. In an article in Lightmoor Life, a popular community blog in the area, Telford & Wrekin Council said “Given the scale of savings the Council must find – £40 million by 2014 – it was decided that this spend, equivalent to £100 per home, could not be justified. In the borough around three in four homes can already access to superfast broadband, compared with the rest of Shropshire which, because of its more rural nature, has some of the lowest broadband coverage in the country.”

The contract announced on 27th March 2013 aims to provide around 145,000 premises (home and business) across the Shropshire region with universal access to standard broadband with at least 2 Mbps and also includes improvements to the regions fibre infrastructure.

The project is currently at the planning stage and is due for completion end of Spring 2016.

For more information, and to keep up to date, regarding the project visit the Connecting Shropshire website.