Openreach Brings FTTP to More South Gloucestershire Villages

The South Gloucestershire Council in England has announced that Phase 3B of their state aid supported deployment of gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP technology, which is being delivered via Openreach (BT), is in the process of reaching a number of additional rural communities.

So far the related Connecting South Gloucestershire project, which follows the Building Digital UK framework, has already helped to extend “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) coverage to over 96% of local premises (i.e. 22,000 extra properties), which includes over 4,300 premises that have also been covered using gigabit-capable FTTP (“full fibre“) technology.

By comparison today’s announcement is expected to “take superfast broadband coverage from 96 per cent to 99 per cent” coverage across the region by 31st March 2021 (completion date). The communities that will benefit from this Phase 3B extension of FTTP coverage include Chipping Sodbury, Coalpit Heath, Cromhall, Falfield, Lansdown, Little Badminton, Rangeworthy, Tockington, Tormarton and Yate.

Councillor Ben Burton said:

“We are pleased to announce this latest phase in our broadband programme which will deliver superfast fibre connections to even more hard to reach rural properties.

We are working to ensure that no part of the community is left behind. We understand how important broadband is for people, especially those running rural businesses, so we are very pleased to help even more of our residents get connected to a faster service. In the areas where we have not been able to help so far, we have been trying to find alternative ways to support these communities and we will continue to do all we can until everyone in the area has access to good speeds.”

Connie Dixon, Regional Partnership Director for Openreach, said:

“Lockdown showed us that having great connectivity has never been more important. The Openreach network carried around 60 per cent more traffic in the South West in May this year than it did in February – and it didn’t skip a beat. It stood the test of home-working and home-schooling and, through our partnership with Connecting South Gloucestershire, thousands of homes and businesses can upgrade to the best broadband available – Full Fibre.”

Many of the homes and businesses included in this latest phase are already able to contact their provider to upgrade to a full fibre broadband package of their choice, while others are still in the commissioning or build stage until early 2021. Unfortunately, there’s no mention in today’s announcement of how much funding (reinvestment or otherwise) is involved in the Phase 3B deployment.