£28m deal means 98% could get superfast broadband

A £28 million deal to continue the roll out of superfast broadband means 98 per cent of people in Coventry, Warwickshire and Solihull will have access to it.

The CSW Broadband partnership will take ultrafast broadband to thousands more homes and businesses in some of the region’s most remote locations.

The investment is being made possible thanks to different funding sources, including local authorities, the Government, BT and the Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP).

CSW Broadband is responsible for the rollout with BT as its cofunding network partner.

More details about the first locations to benefit will be announced early next month.

The latest roll-out is part of an ongoing CSW Broadband programme and will be delivered by Openreach.

It will use a mixture of technologies, including fibre to the premises (FTTP) technology, capable of delivering download speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) and upload speeds of up to 220Mbps.

The new investment will enable nearly 15,500 more premises in Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire to access superfast fibre broadband, with the majority of them – almost 90 per cent – able to get ultrafast speeds.

The CSW Broadband programme is spearheaded by Warwickshire County Council and BT, and part of the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme.

The latest phase of the roll-out includes around £2million from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), with additional funding from Coventry City Council, Solihull Council, Warwickshire County Council, Warwickshire District and Borough Councils, as well as BT.

Engineers from Openreach will begin work on this phase next spring. The roll-out is expected to reach the first premises in around 12 months’ time, with all the upgrades due to be completed by the end of 2019.

It builds on the first two phases of the CSW Broadband programme.

Cllr Peter Butlin, deputy leader of Warwickshire County Council, said: “This announcement is great news. When the CSW Broadband project started, just over 73 per cent of premises in Warwickshire could achieve speeds of 24Mbps or above.

“We’re looking forward to more than 98 per cent being able to achieve what would at one time have been unthinkable speeds of over 30Mbps.”