BT to bring fibre-based broadband to North and North East Lincolnshire

BT has been selected to pump superfast broadband across 89 per cent of properties across North and North East Lincolnshire. 

The North Lincs Broadband Programme will start bringing faster speeds to residents and companies across the largely rural regions in 2014. 

Bill Murphy, BT’s managing director for Next Generation Access said: 

“This is a large rural area which makes deploying broadband a substantial challenge but a vital one which will help local businesses to be competitive and ensure they remain in the county. It can also play an important role in attracting more firms to the county, helping to create jobs for local people.” 

Read Recombu Digital’s features on Fibre Broadband and BDUK and BT Broadband Rollout UpdatesThe majority of premises covered by the North Lincs Broadband Programme will benefit from FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) connections. 

BT’s FTTC lines provide top download speeds of 80Mbps and top upload speeds of 20Mbps. The actual speed you get is dependent on the distance from your home or firm to a connected street cabinet as the last mile is made of copper, not fibre. 

FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) is a pure fibre solution and will be deployed in a small number of places. This provides a much more robust and future-proofed connection and speeds no not degrade over distance. Additionally, those who get an FTTC connection from BT will be able to upgrade the last mile of their connection to FTTP through the FTTP On Demand programme. 

This is the latest Broadband Delivery for the UK (BDUK) project that has been awarded to BT. 

The government is contributing £2.64 million from the BDUK fund to the project and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) is providing £1.557 million while BT coughs up £1.51 million. 

There’s no word yet what those in the remaining 11 per cent of the region stand to benefit from. Until now, all BDUK contracts have stipulated that a minimum 2Mbps speed will be provided by the company that gets the job, in this case (and every one so far), BT. 

The goalposts on broadband coverage have since been moved from when BDUK was first announced. Those in the 11 per cent not covered by North Lincs Broadband could benefit from alternative fixed-line, wireless and mobile broadband solutions, as per the new plans. Whether BT provide this or not remains to be seen.