Rural homes and businesses in South Gloucestershire and Wiltshire will get next-generation gigabit broadband built to them under a £5 billion plan to level up internet access across the UK.
New details published today from Project Gigabit, a government scheme to upgrade broadband infrastructure in hard-to-reach areas, reveal that up to 88,000 rural homes and businesses in the area are in line to be connected to lightning-fast speeds.
For South Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Swindon, the procurement start date is August 2022, with a contract commencement date of July 2023. This will cover 88,000 premises, and is worth £85m-£145m.
Brings total number of premises eligible for Project Gigabit in South West to 145,900
Project Gigabit is a national mission to level up by connecting more people and businesses to reliable, fast broadband
The Project Gigabit programme targets properties that would otherwise have been left behind in broadband companies’ rollout plans, prioritising those that currently have the slowest connections. Their available speeds will rocket to more than 1,000 megabits or one gigabit per second - enough to download a HD movie in less than 30 seconds and lay the foundations for tomorrow’s tech such as 8K-quality video streaming.
It means families no longer having to battle over bandwidth and will give people in rural areas the freedom to live and work more flexibly with the speed and reliability needed to start and run businesses.
Battling for Better Broadband has been a key part of my Positive Plan for South Gloucestershire, so I am delighted that we have made this progress.
Find out more about our Positive Plan for Broadband here
https://www.lukehall.org.uk/campa.../positive-plan-broadband
