Black Country broadband project receives £1.2 million boost

Black Country businesses are being urged to make the most of the new superfast broadband technology being rolled out across the region.

The multi-million pound Black Country Broadband Project – led by the Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and BT – has now reached another major milestone, making faster fibre broadband available to more than 40,000 local premises.

The partnership has also secured additional investment for the area from the LEP, the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme and BT, where an extra £1.2 million will enable the Black Country Broadband Project to make the technology available to an additional 2,000 local premises.

Areas to benefit from the recent move include Blackheath, Brierley Hill, Cradley Heath, Dudley, Halesowen, Kingswinford, Lye, Sedgley and Stourbridge.

Ninder Johal, board member for the Black Country LEP, said: “The Black Country Broadband Project is making terrific progress, but we’re keen for more local people to take advantage and upgrade their broadband service, which they can do at little or no extra cost, to ensure they don’t get left behind in a world where so many things rely on us having access to fast, reliable broadband.”

So far, engineers from Openreach – the local network business which is part of BT group – have installed nearly 200,000 kilometres of optical fibre and around 370 fibre broadband road-side cabinets for the Black Country Broadband Project, which is part of the Government’s BDUK programme.

The Black Country Broadband Project was launched to bring fibre broadband to areas of the region that are not already able to access faster fibre broadband as a result of any commercial roll-outs of fibre broadband by the private sector.