Gov Starts £5bn UK Gigabit Broadband and Voucher Schemes UPDATE
The UK Government has today revealed new details of how their £5bn gigabit broadband roll-out scheme will work and rebranded it as “Project Gigabit“. As part of that they’ve also confirmed £210m for an extension of their rural Gigabit Voucher scheme and £110m to connect up to 7,000 rural GP surgeries, libraries and schools.
At present around 40% of homes and businesses across the United Kingdom can already access a Gigabit (1Gbps+) speed capable broadband ISP network, which is likely to reach over half of premises by the end of 2021. But the majority of that is largely thanks to commercial deployments and upgrades in urban areas (i.e. most of it stems from Virgin Media’s DOCSIS 3.1 upgrade, while the rest comes from FTTP).
Here is a link to the full article which is being updated during the course of the day.
Something to note here is that Cheshire is being looked at AFTER Phase 2 and beyond. Based on this and the rate at which Openreach are currently rolling out full fibre. I would suggest that for those of us in a rural setting such as parts of Ashton Hayes, Mouldsworth and Manley are unlikely to benefit from full fibre by any operator for some time to come.
This leaves many of us who have not already done so, the opportunity to take on Gigaloch's build to ensure we are not left in the dark for what might be years to come.