Culture Secretary launches £12m Black Country Broadband project

A £12m project which aims to extend the availability of high-speed fibre broadband to 98% of homes and businesses in the Black Country has been officially launched.

The ambitious project, which covers Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton, aims to reach its target in less than three years.

Funding for the programme is made up of £2.9 million from the Government’s Broadband Delivery (BDUK) programme, £6.4m from BT and £2.9m from the Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership’s Growing Places Fund.

Culture Secretary – and Bromsgrove MP – Sajid Javid was due to launch The Black Country Broadband Project today, ahead of his commitments at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham.

He joined local councils and representatives from the broadband partnership organisations – the Black Country LEP, BT and the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme – for the event.

Engineers from Openreach – BT’s local network business – intend to lay new fibre optic cables and upgrade more than 400 road-side cabinets to enable local people to connect to the new fibre broadband network.

The investment in high-speed fibre broadband is intended to help businesses across the Black Country become more competitive and grow their businesses both in the UK and overseas.

It will also enable local people to better access a range of public services online, as well as new leisure, educational and training opportunities.

Sajid Javid said: “Today marks the beginning of an incredible transformation of broadband in the Black Country. Government fully appreciates that access to fast and reliable broadband is no longer a luxury – it is a necessity, which is precisely why we are funding projects like this one all over the UK. As a result of this £12m investment, 98% of the Black Country will be able to access superfast speeds by 2017 and this will provide a terrific boost to the local economy.”
 
Ninder Johal, Chair, Black Country Broadband Group and an LEP board member said: “Small businesses across the Black Country identified slow broadband speeds as a barrier to growth so this partnership is great news for businesses in our area. The Black Country LEP is the first LEP to contribute funding under the new BDUK programme, which has made this project possible.”

Bill Murphy, Managing Director of Next Generation Access for BT said: “Combined investments by BT and other communications providers means high-speed fibre broadband is already available to around 92% of the area – more than 468,000 homes and businesses.

“Working together, The Black Country Broadband Project will ensure we go further and enable nearly all of the area’s businesses and homes to take advantage of this exciting technology.”

The project will begin with several months of planning and survey work before the first services become available towards the end of 2015.

Businesses will have access to high-speed connectivity, with fibre broadband enabling faster online activities, the benefits of which are considerable. It will enable firms to do far more in less time, speeding up file and data transfers, collaborate with colleagues and customers on conference or video calls or swap their hardware and expensive software licenses for files, processing power and software from cloud computing. Staff can also work as effectively from home as they would in the office.

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