South Gloucestershire Council

Published: 23/11/2016

Rural villages from Elberton to Littleton-Upon-Severn will have access to a fibre to the premises (FTTP) solution under plans to rollout broadband coverage to even more communities.

These villages were announced in July along with Tytherington, Dyrham, Hinton, Oldbury-Upon-Severn, Cromhall, Codrington and Little Sodbury as the latest areas to benefit from the rollout after we were able to secure an additional £1.49m investment. They would all be able to benefit from access to FTTP. The village of Hill has also been announced today as a community which will benefit from FTTP.

FTTP offers superfast broadband speeds over a reliable, fibre connection straight to the subscriber’s premises. BT will carry out the necessary surveying work over the coming months and we anticipate this phase of the build to be completed by December 2017.

The partnership between South Gloucestershire Council, BDUK and BT has already made faster fibre broadband available to over 18,000 homes and businesses across the district since it began in 2013. This will take superfast broadband coverage from 93 per cent to 95 per cent coverage across the region by the end of 2017.

Councillor John Goddard, Chair of Resources Sub-Committee, said: “This is new technology which we’ve not deployed before but would provide the best solution for small, rural communities over a wide geographical area. We are committed to providing the widest coverage we can within the available funding to ensure that as many residents and businesses are able to benefit from better broadband.”

In December, we will be launching an invitation to companies/organisations to bid for a contract to provide further coverage to parts of South Gloucestershire which have not been able to be included in the current rollout. Bidding would be open to any company or organisation to bid on the contract.

For more information on the broadband rollout visit www.southglos.gov.uk/broadband