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The Gloucestershire County Council (GCC) in England has today celebrated how their Fastershire programme, which was jointly conducted alongside Herefordshire Council, has now helped to enable 98.5% of properties in the county to access a “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) connection, up from only 39% in 2012 and 36% in 2011.
The Fastershire project, which was backed by millions in state aid and delivered various different deployment contracts with Openreach (BT), Gigaclear, Airband, FullFibre Ltd and others (initially using FTTC technology, before switching to FTTP in later phases), was broadly focused on helping to upgrade premises in areas that commercial operators had deemed unviable to serve with private investment alone (usually rural communities).
The main focus of this effort was on expanding the availability of “superfast” (30Mbps+) capable broadband networks and ISPs. In addition, Fastershire has also helped increase gigabit-capable broadband (1000Mbps+) coverage across Gloucestershire, and the county now boasts over 80% gigabit coverage and 60% full fibre (FTTP) access, compared to only 1% in 2012.
Cllr David Gray said:
“Access to fast and reliable broadband is essential for our communities, businesses and overall economic growth and we’re proud of the progress made through the Fastershire Broadband Project.
Building broadband infrastructure across the county has been challenging, but with the support of our partners and communities, this cross-county collaboration has benefited properties in every district in the county. As the Fastershire Broadband Project draws to a close, we are committed to extending improved broadband access even further.”
The Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit programme is currently still working to extend 1Gbps download speeds (200Mbps+ uploads) to reach “nationwide” coverage (c. 99%) by around 2030 (currently running at over 86%), although that target is a national average and the specific expectation for Gloucestershire may be lower.