Around 57,000 homes in Hampshire will get access to superfast broadband as part of a deal with BT.
Hampshire County Council signed a contract with BT as part of the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) scheme. The deal will see at least 90 per cent of premises in the county having access to superfast broadband by the end of 2015.
The first communities to benefit from this project are expected to have access to the high-speed technology by the end of this year, with the programme due to be completed by the end of 2015. Without the intervention of the Hampshire Broadband Programme around 20 per cent of premises in Hampshire would not have been able to access fibre broadband services.
Catch up on BT’s Broadband Rollout announcementsOne of the first areas to see improvements will be the Solent Enterprise Zone which is being developed at Daedalus in Lee-on-the-Solent, Hampshire. Daedalus, the former airfield of the Royal Navy, is one of 24 enterprise zones being set up nationally to support local economic and employment growth.
The council, alongside district and borough partners, invested £5 million in the project and BDUK contributed the same amount. BT is contributing an additional £3.8 million towards the cost of installing the new fibre infrastructure bringing the total investment in the project to just over £13.8 million.
Councillor Ken Thornber, Leader of Hampshire County Council said that he was pleased that BT could now start work on “putting in the necessary infrastructure that will benefit so many businesses and households, predominantly located in the less populated and ‘harder to reach’ areas of Hampshire.”
“Access to the internet and fast broadband is crucial to the on-going social and economic prosperity of the region. Putting in this network infrastructure is as important as other major transport infrastructures like roads, rail, and airports,” he said.
Openreach, BT’s local network division, will now begin the work on surveying locations across the county.
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