Good news comes to Lancashire as both BT and the Lancashire County Council (LCC) revealed that as many as 97 per cent of premises located within the area will have access to superfast broadband services (both FTTC and FTTP) in two years.
According to the telecoms giant, residents of Lancashire will be among the “be the first to benefit” from BDUK’s treasure chest which has been coughed up to improve the broadband situation in the UK (£530m to rise to £830m by 2017).
Leader of the LCC, Geoff Driver, commented on the news:
“Today our ambition to provide Lancashire’s citizens and business with a world-class broadband service turns into a reality. It is important that as many areas as possible benefit, and that is why we have ensured that even the more remote areas of the county see a significant improvement in their speeds.”
Bill Murphy, BT’s Managing Director of NGA, also said that he was pleased to see Lancashire being the first county to benefit from superfast broadband:
“We’re looking forward to working with other local authorities and devolved governments to bring the economic benefits of high speed broadband to businesses and communities across the UK.”
Additional funds have been set up to trial services in more rural locations of Lancashire and the ambition is to leave “virtually zero” households with basic broadband within the area.
Meanwhile, according to Ofcom there are roughly 15 per cent in every county who are facing speeds of less than 2Mbps.
Meanwhile in other areas of the UK the superfast digital divide gets wider. Tavistock is not on any plan, not in any funding but does BDUK care? I think we all know the answer to that…