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Broadband

Broadband in Suffolk

 

 We have made considerable progress with our campaign for better broadband for the County which has resulted in:

 

  • Suffolk County Council accepting ownership and responsibility for the Better Broadband for Suffolk project
  • Appointing our recommended candidate, Peter Ingram, as Programme Director
  • Suffolk County Council backing the project with approximately £11.6million of local funding
  • Winning a matching £11.6million of Government grant funding
  • Preparing a tender document for a total project bid of approximately £47million (using 50% supplier match funding) to provide Superfast broadband across the whole County
  • The FSB Suffolk Chairman, Christopher Soule sitting on the Supervisory Board of the project

 

There is more detailed information available on the Better Broadband for Suffolk web pages

 

To clarify a few frequently asked questions:

 

  • The primary target is full coverage of broadband across the whole County – this is not 80% or 90% coverage it is full 100% coverage – by 2015
  • The secondary target is 85% - 90% coverage of Superfast Broadband by 2015
  • The definition of Superfast Broadband is high reliability broadband with download speeds in excess of 20Mbit/sec
  • For the 10% - 15% who do not get Superfast Broadband by 2015 the target is that they should all get broadband with better than 2Mbit/sec download speed by that date
  • The money will only be spent on providing broadband to those areas that will not be covered by published expansion schemes of the existing service providers (in other words we are not going to be giving the money to organisations like BT to do something that they were going to do anyway!)
  • Because we are dealing with large amounts of Government money we have to go through a full procurement process which takes time – so there probably won't be any money actually spent until early 2013

 

We do need your help though. We need to demonstrate that there is a demand for Superfast Broadband in the County so please take a few minutes and complete the Better Broadband Survey

 

Thank you