Rutland Council and BT to roll out fibre for 90 per cent of the county

Nine out of ten homes and businesses in Rutland will get superfast broadband speeds of up to 80 Mbits/sec with all homes having access to a minimum of 2 Mbits/sec services by the end of next year according to BT.

The telecoms company and Rutland County Council have agreed to a £3m project to roll out fibre broadband to 90 per cent of the county under the Government's Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme.

Currently only a few premises in Rutland can be reached by fibre broadband as part of BT's current commercial rollout plans. However, using funding from the £530m pot managed by BDUK will allow fibre to be rolled out to most of the areas not considered commercially viable.

BT will contribute £800,000 to the project with £2.2m coming from Rutland County Council, which includes £710,000 from BDUK. Rutland County Council has additional funding from other sources to provide fibre to a further seven per cent of the county within the same timescale.

Terry King, deputy leader of Rutland County Council, said: "Rutland is a sparse rural area and getting high-speed affordable fibre broadband to 97 per cent of the county will make a huge difference to the long-term prospects of the area and quality of life for all.

"Broadband coverage in Rutland is poor and in some areas very poor, which is why we need a solution like this for the whole county addressing ‘not spots' [areas that have no broadband coverage at all] and areas the market will not penetrate.

"This will provide benefits for the wider community such as developing education through e-technology and giving residents access to new models of care and social interaction."