North Lincs signs up to new broadband roll-out

North Lincs signs up to new broadband roll-out

North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire Councils have inked a £5.7 million deal with telecommunications giant BT to roll-out high-speed fibre optic broadband to the vast majority of homes and businesses in the region.

The Northern Lincs Broadband Programme – which will see 89 per cent of homes and businesses enjoying the high-speed service over the coming years – is being financed in part by the Government's Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) framework, which has already been responsible for providing funding for a number of council rural broadband deals across the country.

BT is injecting funding of £1.51 million into the North Lincs programme, while £2.64 million will come from BDUK and the remaining £1.557 million will come from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The programme should see the area enjoying downstream speeds of up to 80Mbps and upstream speeds of up to 20Mbps.

A spokesperson for North Lincolnshire Council spokesperson told Computer World: “This is an important step in the campaign to bring faster broadband speeds to every home, business and school in North and North East Lincs."

"We will be announcing the installation schedule in the coming months and communities across the county can look forward to improved access to online services and better connectivity for businesses from 2014 onwards,” the spokesperson went on to say.

BT has previously been appointed as the preferred provider on every single rural broadband programme contract through the BDUK framework, as all of the other suppliers that had tendered for the job ended up withdrawing as they could not compete with the communications giant while also complying with the terms and conditions set out by the Government.

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