Phase 2 – Some more developments & some more accurate (?) Maps.
Dec 8, 2014The County Council has started a consultation on where this extra money should be spent.
Regular followers of this blog will know that what has now become known as phase 1 of the Connecting Cumbria project (plus the BT commercial roll-out) is on track to reach its target of 93% of premises covered by Superfast Broad Band (SFBB) by the end of 2015.
Phase 2 is designed to extend SFBB to give an additional 2% coverage by 2017 funded by a £5.72m package. As part of the preparation for phase 2, the Council has mapped out what it thinks is the likely outcome of phase 1 and from this, defined what it sees as intervention areas for phase 2.
The consultation document and maps can be found from the links at the bottom of the web page http://www.opinionsuite.com/cumbria/cumbria-county-council/chief-executives-office/connecting-cumbria-phase-2-consultation/consult_view . The extra detail maps, in particular make interesting reading as they give a snapshot of where things are thought to end up at the end of next year.
The NGA maps relate to SFBB (but see comment below) and the white & ‘conditional white’ areas are areas which are unlikely to have SFBB by the end of 2015 and are considered as intervention areas for phase 2. There is some confusion as to exactly what the maps show as the speed threshold for phase 2 is being lowered from 24 Mb/s to 15 Mb/s – Do the maps take this decision into account when defining intervention areas?
The BB maps relate to the basic 2Mb/s service – which is meant to be guaranteed to all premises by the end of 2015.
The priority for phase 2 spending is given as targeting NGA interventions to use available public funds to provide a ‘step change’ in BB capability of premises getting relatively slow BB speeds (less than 15 Mb/s) rather than for obtaining marginal increases in speed for premises already getting 15 Mb/s and above.
The consultation, which has the usual impossibly tight deadline of 9th January, is to ‘give an opportunity for the general public to register opinions re the state aid proposals and the proposed targeted areas.
Let me know what you think. I’ll try to get the local Broadband Champions together and we’ll get any comments fed into the process. Incidentally, although the maps are a huge improvement on all that has gone before, they are no substitute for postcode data –we’re still working on that one…..