• Hard-to-reach premises across South East England to benefit from £5 billion government scheme, including Oxfordshire
• Plans will see hundreds of millions of investment in next-generation networks
Rural homes and businesses across South East England will get next-generation gigabit broadband built to them under a £5 billion plan to level up internet access across the UK.
New details published today from Project Gigabit, a government scheme to upgrade broadband infrastructure in hard-to-reach areas, reveal that up to 703,000 rural homes and businesses in the region and surrounding areas are in line to be connected to lightning-fast speeds.
This is in addition to commercial providers’ roll out which is seeing gigabit broadband being deployed rapidly across the country - from one in ten households in the UK in 2019 to more than two in five today. The country is also on track for one of the fastest rollouts in Europe and for 60 per cent of all households to have access to gigabit speeds by the end of this year.
The Project Gigabit programme targets properties that would otherwise have been left behind in broadband companies’ rollout plans, prioritising those that currently have the slowest connections.
Their available speeds will rocket to more than 1,000 megabits or one gigabit per second - enough to download a HD movie in less than 30 seconds and lay the foundations for tomorrow’s tech such as 8K-quality video streaming.
It means families no longer having to battle over bandwidth and will give people in rural areas the freedom to live and work more flexibly with the speed and reliability needed to run businesses.
The areas - including the dates work is due to start, the number of premises and estimated costs - are as follows:
Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden said:
“We’re clamping down on patchy internet connections for rural communities in the South East and through our £5 billion Project Gigabit residents and businesses will be among the millions across the UK to get lightning-fast gigabit broadband.
“Our investment will draw in commercial providers to improve the quality and speed of connections and help us achieve our national mission to level up the regions and build back better.”
Project Gigabit aims to accelerate our recovery from covid, fire up high growth sectors like tech and the creative industries and level up the country, spreading wealth and creating jobs the breadth of Britain.
Find out more about Project Gigabit and what the announcement means for you and your business
