Digital Durham looks like it’ll be asking BT to provide fibre broadband to its hard to reach areas.
Though Digital Durham’s invitation to tender process won’t begin until tomorrow, initial interest so far only appears to be coming from one direction. Nothing official has been announced by Digital Durham but Twitter chatter reveals that so far it’s only BT that seems bothered at all.
Digital Durham is a project that aims to bring superfast broadband to the majority of homes and businesses in the short term, with a long term goal of providing 100 per cent superfast access.
By the end of 2013/early 2014, its hoped that 60 per cent of premises will have access to speeds of 30Mbps or higher with this coverage increasing to 90 per cent by the end of 2014/early 2015.
Read Recombu Digital’s report on Fibre Broadband and BDUK
After that, the remaining 10 per cent would be connected by the end of 2016/early 2017. Already 40 per cent of premises in County Durham and Gateshead are due to see superfast broadband rolled out in some form and so the Digital Durham project will focus on connecting that other 60 per cent.
Local authorities are stumping up £7.79 million for Digital Durham to match the £7.79 million from BDUK. The total amount needed for the project has been redacted from the PDF, so there’s no saying right now how much BT would need to pay.
Speculation about whether or not BT will get a BDUK broadband contract right now is like wondering if the new Pope’s a Catholic. Ever since Fujitsu formally pulled out of the BDUK bidding process, it’s become a one-horse race.
With the official tendering process due to start tomorrow it won’t be long before we get official confirmation, straight from the horse’s mouth.
Leave a Reply