Lancashire County Council announced BT as its partner to bring superfast broadband to those
areas of the county that would otherwise not be getting it in January. BT has
now issued its press
release and confirming the size of its own investment into the project.
BT will contribute £30 million to the project, which will bring the budget
to some £62.5 million, and this means that once the project completes by the
end of 2014 some £130 million will have been invested in broadband
infrastructure in the county.
The goal of getting a mixture of FTTC and FTTP to 97% of the premises in the
county by the end of 2014, exceeds the BDUK target of 90%. Although a large
percentage will be FTTC, with the FTTP on Demand option those businesses or
home owners that need the extra speed of full fibre will the option to
upgrade.
A £500,000 fund has been created to improve broadband in the most rural
areas, with a pilot taking place east of Lancaster. Independent of this there
is the B4rn project which started its fibre dig on
Saturday. The area B4rn is working in is likely to be in the 3% not to get
fibre from the BT/LCC project so progressing independently to avoid being left
with the USC level services makes sense.
Test your broadband speed
Follow us on X for the latest broadband news 
Good to see these tenders starting to be awarded after what feels like a very long delay. The comment about 97% getting FTTC or FTTP should start to reassure people in the “final third” that many will get connected to fast broadband now.
if BT do give you the option to upgrade from FTTC to FTTP, I wonder how much it would cost?
Great to see some movement at last, although I’m skeptical about the benefit it’s going to bring to Calder Vale, or many of the villages around Garstang, our cab (cab13) is over 2.25 miles distant.