The council’s ‘phase one’ Superfast Broadband Project has made excellent progress across South Gloucestershire and is now complete. All of the cabinets in our local communities that were due to be upgraded to fibre by the project are live and ready for service, meaning thousands of residents and businesses are now able to enjoy all the benefits of a superfast fibre broadband connection.
Our original target at the start of the phase one Superfast Broadband Project was to pass 15,000 homes and businesses across South Gloucestershire. In September 2014, we extended our target to reach 16,000 premises by March 2015. We have exceeded this target and have now passed 17,000 homes, which is absolutely fantastic news! This means that 2,000 more homes and businesses across South Gloucestershire have benefited from the project, with the same amount of funding.
Further good news is that, as well as exceeding our targets and completing the phase one rollout on time, due to savings made during the project we will be able to push the fibre coverage even further across South Gloucestershire. More information will be available in our next quarterly update.
Key figures for phase one
- we have now reached more than 17,000 premises with our new fibre network across South Gloucestershire
- we have installed and switched on 85 new fibre-enabled cabinets
- we have laid over 140km of fibre cable as part of the superfast broadband rollout across South Gloucestershire
- of the 17,000 premises passed, up to 14,000 will be able to access speeds of more than 24Mbps (megabits per second), with the remaining 3,000 premises having access to improved broadband speeds up to 24Mbps (megabits per second).
- when combined with BT’s commercial roll-out, it means that more than 105,000 households and businesses in South Gloucestershire can now get fibre broadband
- 100% of the phase one Superfast Broadband Project is now complete – on time, under budget and with even more premises covered