Council pushes for high-speed broadband in Northumberland

Various Internet service providers are currently locked in a race to provide superfast broadband speeds to their customers. According to the Broadband Delivery UK Glossary of terms, superfast broadband is defined as “having a potential headline access speed of at least 20Mb, with no upper limit.”

BT has been speeding up the deployment of fibre to locations all over the UK. The broadband giant’s new fibre optic service is called Fiber-to-the-Premises, which will begin delivering speeds of up to 300Mbps in several areas by Spring 2012. BT plans to upgrade their networks with fibre technology with the goal of providing two-thirds of the UK with these services. Deployment was initially targeted to be completed by 2015, but the firm has been working ahead of schedule and has announced that it will be finished instead by 2014.

Talking about fibre, CityFibre is also working to build a fibre network that’s worth $800 million. The London-based firm is looking to raise the amount in order to offer gigabit-per-second connections to close to a million UK households and establishments.

Moreover, Virgin Media has also just recently announced that they had finished the first phase in fibre deployment projects and are currently offering 100Mb broadband speeds to a third of the UK, including Harborne in Birmingham, Lincoln, Seven Kings in Greater London, and Solihull. The expansion will be completed by the middle of next year.

Seeing how numerous areas are getting upgraded networks to have access to fast-speed broadband, the Northumberland County Council is pushing to bring high-speed broadband to the county. The program will focus on providing all of the users in the area with a standard service of 2Mbps, while 90% will be provided with access to superfast speeds by 2015.

The chief executive of the Northumberland County Council, Steve Stewart, stated: “Bringing superfast broadband to Northumberland is a high priority for this council. In August, we received news that we had been given an indicative allocation of £7.03m to upgrade our broadband infrastructure. The release of this money is dependent on the council providing match funding and submitting a detailed Local Broadband Plan for Government approval.”

The program will make use of government funding amount to £7.03 million. Stewart added: “Our plan must clearly illustrate how we will focus resources on upgrading our networks, alongside evidence from across the community that the people of Northumberland want this service. This is why we are launching the iNorthumberland campaign – giving businesses and residents the opportunity to voice how essential it is that we secure faster and more reliable internet connections for Northumberland.”

Northumberland’s Local Broadband Plan will be sent over to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport by the end of this year.

Stewart also talked about the benefits of pushing for superfast broadband, stating: “Superfast broadband will have a transformational effect on all aspects of life in our county. Our project envisages benefits to healthcare provision, the delivery of education and more efficient and connected ways the public sector might work together. Improved broadband is also a major factor in our economic plans for the county – enabling more people to start their own businesses while established companies can scale up to serve a global market. The possibilities are endless which is why this project is so vital and offers an exciting future for Northumberland.”

Source – Northumberland County Council