Remote parts of Staffordshire gets superfast broadband

THE village of Blackshaw Moor has become one of the first communities in the Staffordshire Moorlands to benefit from Staffordshire’s multi-million pound high-speed fibre broadband programme.

Around 150 premises in the community now have access to faster fibre broadband for the first time as a result of the project.

Fibre broadband has now been made available to 10,000 homes and businesses in Staffordshire since engineering work began in May this year. The county council has partnered with BT to roll-out the broadband installation.

By the end of 2014, the partnership is expected to have made the high-speed technology available to more than 22,000 Staffordshire premises.

Cllr Mark Winnington, Staffordshire County Council’s cabinet member for the economy and infrastructure, said: “The Superfast Staffordshire project is connecting people across the county and increasing opportunities, which is why it is so important. It is enabling us to reach communities which previously had no access to superfast broadband which is vital to people and businesses.

“Connecting people through faster broadband speeds is as important as road or rail and means we’ll be ahead of many other areas of the UK and Europe. People should not have to miss out because of where they live or where their business is located.”

The combined investment from Superfast Staffordshire, BT and other private sector programmes will mean 95% of homes and businesses across the county having access to super-fast broadband by spring 2016.

Cllr Winnington said the partnership was also working hard to find a solution to improving broadband speeds to the remaining 5% of properties in the county not yet eligible for the superfast connection.

Bill Murphy, BT managing director of next generation access, said: “This is an exciting time for Staffordshire. The Superfast Staffordshire programme is a huge engineering project which is gathering pace as today’s milestone demonstrates.”

During the Superfast Staffordshire roll-out, more than one million metres of fibre optic cable and around 500 new street-side cabinets will be installed to connect people to the new network across the county.

The partnership programme is in addition to BT’s commercial roll-out that aims to enable more than 370,000 county premises by the end of 2014.