CSW Broadband to reach another 15,000 premises

High speed fibre broadband will be delivered to more than 15,000 additional premises in Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire following the latest expansion of CSW Broadband.

Following a rigorous procurement process, the CSW Broadband partnership, which includes Warwickshire County Council, has awarded all three Lots that comprise Contract 3, Part 1, to BT.

Most of the 15,000 homes and businesses will get Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) technology capable of delivering ultrafast download speeds of up to 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps) and upload speeds of up to 220Mbps.

As with Contract 2, the CSW Broadband team has built headroom into the contract, meaning that if additional funding is secured then this can be rolled into the current contract without the need to go through a lengthy procurement process.

For the first time since the CSW Broadband project started, parts of Coventry will be included in the rollout, though it is unable to move into the city centre (i.e. inside the ring road) as this is considered to be urban and therefore outside the scope of the State Aid approval for the current project. However, significant parts of the remainder of the Coventry City Council area will be included in the Contract 3 rollout.

As the fibre broadband network is being installed by Openreach, households and businesses will have a wide choice of fibre broadband providers.

Upgrades do not happen automatically. Residents and businesses wanting to benefit from the upgrade will need to place an order with their chosen fibre broadband provider once the work has been completed.

Openreach uses its existing underground ducting wherever possible, minimising disruption and the need to dig up roads and pavements.

The first locations to benefit are expected to be announced in early October. We are working on a new mapping system that will go live with the announcement of Wave 8. The Contract 3, Part 1, areas will be shown on that map.

Updates on the roll-out are available from: www.cswbroadband.org.uk