Moves to roll-out superfast broadband to homes and businesses across Cheshire have been given another major boost following a green light this week from the EU.
European state-aid approval paves the way for the UK's £530m rural broadband scheme to start in earnest, meaning that work can begin laying the cables for local authority broadband projects all around the UK.
The go-ahead follows a direct intervention from the Culture Secretary in Brussels last week, after several months of delay in Europe.
This decision lifts a significant blockage on progress to move forward with ambitious plans to deliver more than 90 per cent superfast broadband coverage for Cheshire, Halton and Warrington, under the Connecting Cheshire partnership of four local authorities.
In Cheshire, Council funding will be used to match Government funding of £3.24m already received to date, combined with an anticipated £15m grant from the European Union to deploy new superfast broadband networks, from 2013, in areas where commercial providers have not yet upgraded the existing broadband infrastructure.
Connecting Cheshire expects to appoint either BT Openreach or Fujitsu as its partner next spring, in line with a national procurement exercise overseen by Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK).
The appointed telecom company will also provide matched funds and this combined investment is expected to ensure that the project will exceed the Government's target of 90 per cent of homes and businesses being able to connect to superfast broadband by 2015.
Councillor David Brown, Deputy Leader of Cheshire East Council and Cabinet member in charge of strategic communities, said: "This is excellent news and a really significant step forward. We are now that much closer in our drive to ensure Cheshire can benefit fully, both socially and economically, from faster broadband speeds. We can now crack on with delivering broadband plans – boosting growth and jobs.
"As the Connecting Cheshire project moves into closer dialogue with telecom providers, it will be crucial to demonstrate a high level of demand. So I urge everyone to join our campaign for Better Broadband in Cheshire.
"Over 4,500 residents and 650 businesses have registered so far. This takes just a matter of minutes and will help ensure your community or businesses can be prioritised for investment in faster broadband. Simply register at www.connectingcheshire.org.uk."
Christine Gaskell, Chair of the Cheshire and Warrington Local Enterprise Partnership, said: "This is great news for Cheshire and Warrington and a major step forward following long delays.
"Faster broadband has the potential to boost Cheshire's economy by £1.3 billion over the next 15 years and create more than 11,000 jobs. It is essential that the LEP and all its partners continue work tirelessly to make sure that we deliver broadband to Cheshire and Warrington and secure much needed business growth."
Around 17 per cent of Cheshire homes and businesses receive speeds of less than 2Mbps, mainly in rural areas and the 'Digital Divide' is growing – over the past two years urban speeds increased by more than 73 per cent whilst rural speeds increased by just under 30 per cent.
Photo: Councillor David Brown, Deputy Leader of Cheshire East Council.
Comments
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Such connections do not support high speed broadband!
So rather than high level promises, let's have some detail as to how this is to be achieved!
Else it remains mere promises!
Thanks for taking an interest in the Connecting Cheshire project. The deployment of superfast broadband either commercially by BT Openreach, or as part of our 'gap-funded' model where faster broadband has hitherto not been commercially viable, has been by firstly upgrading the telephone exchanges with fibre optic equipment and then by connecting up each roadside cabinet with fibre optic cables. The connections from the cabinet to premises will remain using the existing copper cables, until full fibre optic connections are made available. The Fibre to the Cabinet model will result in download speeds of up to 80Mbps - well in excess of the EU's definition of superfast broadband of 30Mbps.
In areas with Virgin Media connections, such as Poynton, superfast broadband is provided using fibre optic cables are already laid and significantly higher speeds are available.
Regards Andrew Arditti, Connecting Cheshire
I do have a concern that many connections (including ours) come from poles in the road with wires across to each house from the pole, the poles being connected by underground copper cable to the cabinet (which may be some distance from the pole). Will this cabinet-to-pole link remain aging copper, subject to failure and also throttling broadband speeds?
Fibre to the Cabinet is just not good enough ; its just a way of current suppliers making more with little investment. If the country was serious and the suppliers were honest we would be aiming at the the 1G speeds that are increasingly common in the far east and now the USA. In addition, its not much use having faster connections to the home if the backhaul is heavily contended ; suppliers need to be forced to guarantee speeds rather than the current unto rubbish. Typically we are paying 10 times the price of many west european countries for broadband , and thats what we call competition.
Vin