More superfast broadband money nabbed for Nottingham, but there’s a catch

Nottinghamshire County Council has secured an extra £2.7 million in funding for superfast broadband from Europe, but there’s a catch. 

The sum earmarked for infrastructure under the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) rises to £2.7 million, up from the £867,000 the Superfast Broadband for Nottinghamshire project was looking at getting last December. 

With over twice the amount of cash on the plate, more residents of Nottingham and surrounding areas ought to be able to benefit from superfast speeds of 25Mbps and above. 

The kicker is that this extra cash adds another eight weeks on the procurement process. Even though there’s just one company – BT – in the bidding process right now and the end result is a foregone conclusion, Nottinghamshire still has to reset the clock on this one. 

As revealed by local paper Retford Today (spotted by Think Broadband), ‘potential suppliers’ have until the end of July to respond with proposals on how to connect homes and businesses which have little to no broadband access.  

Currently, the plan is to have the basic 90 per cent of premises covered by superfast broadband by 2015. The extra money may well see this headline figure to swell to 95 or 98 per cent (or higher) but that ‘end of 2014’ deadline will likely also move as had been the case with the majority of BDUK contracts that have been awarded of late.