Worcestershire Aim for 100% Superfast Coverage

Co-founding schemes to bring fast broadband connections to the final 4% of Worcestershire premises.

15:51 23 January 2018

Currently, Superfast Worcestershire project, which is being launched in partnership with Openreach, is slated to bring FTTC and FTTP based “superfast broadband network to 96per cent of the county by 2019.

 

However, reaching the final 4per cent has proved to be a bit challenging. In order to achieve full coverage, the local community has launched two schemes to realize this goal.

 

The first one is called the local body partnership (LBP) Fund & CFP, which is designed to help communities get superfast broadband that are not included in any existing deployment plans. Such communities will be required to contribute to a traditional community fibre partnership scheme, where BT covers the costs in line with its commercial model while the community provides the remaining gap funding. Openreach will build the network to allow people to choose their preferred service provider.

 

The second scheme is called Worcestershire ERDF Business Broadband Vouchers (WEBB), which is designed to support local small to medium enterprises in getting superfast or ultrafast broadband services. The scheme requires SME owners to co-invest with the council. The initiative will provide a maximum of £1,500 voucher (excluding VAT) to help eligible SMEs, charities and voluntary organisations get improved connections installed.