£1m from UK Gov to Boost Superfast Broadband in North Lincolnshire.

The North Lincolnshire Council (NLC) has revealed that it could spend the £1m grant awarded to it in June 2019 by DEFRA’s Rural Broadband Infrastructure (RBI) scheme on extending “superfast broadband” connectivity around rural industrial estates on the edge of Scunthorpe.

At present the existing North Lincolnshire Broadband Project (Contract 1 and 2 + extensions) has already extended 24Mbps+ “superfast broadband” (FTTC and some FTTP) networks – with Openreach’s (BT) support – to cover 95% of premises in the region. Oddly the project site conflicts with recent council reports by saying that it has resulted “in 98.5 per cent coverage of superfast broadband by June 2018” (we think they actually mean the raw fibre footprint, including sub-24Mbps speeds, because superfast coverage is not yet at this level).

In any case they recently secured another £1 million of public funding via DEFRA’s new scheme, which as per the original announcement must be “used to support full fibre [FTTP] wherever possible.” Funding under this grant is intended to boost related connectivity for rural businesses and communities.


Full story at ISP Review.