BT Wins BDUK Funds In Shropshire Broadband Deal

Another day brings another BT BDUK deal as the company secured yet more government funding in a £26.4 million agreement with Shropshire Council.

Connecting Shropshire will build on BT’s existing commercial rollout of fibre in the county and bring superfast speeds to 130,000 premises, or 93 percent of all homes and businesses, by spring 2016. As part of the agreement, all properties covered by the project will receive a minimum of 2Mbps.

Shropshire is one of England’s most rural and sparsely populated counties and currently receives average downstream speeds of 8.2Mbps, while 17.1 percent receive speeds slower than 2Mbps.

Shropshire broadband deal

“We have been working hard, through our Connecting Shropshire project, to drive forward improvements to broadband provision for residents and businesses, so we are delighted to have reached this point,” said George Candler, commissioning director for Shropshire Council. “We look forward to working closely with BT over the coming years to ensure people start seeing the benefits of faster broadband even in the remote, rural parts of our county.”

BT will contribute £8.6 million to the project, with Shropshire Council providing £8.2 million and £7.84 million coming from BDUK. Business leaders say that wider adoption of superfast broadband will bring a host of economic advantages to the county.

“Fast broadband connectivity will help our businesses to prosper and in turn help to increase employment across the county,” said Nick Chavasse MBE, Shropshire Business Board champion for broadband. “Fast broadband connectivity will help our businesses to prosper and in turn help to increase employment across the county.

“Poor broadband is a barrier to growth and the plan to roll out fast broadband to the business community, in particular, is crucial to the success of our economic growth strategy.  We will continue to work with and offer our full support to this ambitious partnership programme.”

BT has won all of the BDUK funding available so far and is likely to win all of the remaining money up for grabs after Fujitsu withdrew from the procurement process earlier this month.

Yesterday it agreed a £146 million deal to bring faster broadband to the Scottish Highlands and Islands in what has been described as the UK’s “most complex and challenging” broadband project ever.

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