£20m Superfast Broadband Deal For West Sussex

A £20 million deal's been agreed which promises to give 98% of people in West Sussex superfast broadband.

The county council's signed a contract with BT which they say will give access to more than 40,000 homes and businesses. It was signed at the council offices in Chichester on Wednesday 15th May.

The council's putting in £6.25 million, with the same amount from the Government.

The Better Connected West Sussex Broadband project builds on BT’s on-going commercial fibre deployment across the county, and will provide speeds of at least 24Mbps.

Bill Murphy from BT, said:

"It's taken us about two years of effort in order to get to this point, so it's great news.

"Now we start with our mobilisation phase - gearing up the project team, the people, what exactly we have to do in West Sussex.

"We'll move from mobilisation into a survey, where we'll actually go out and start looking at the network itself to see where we'll have to dig and where we'll have to bring new fibre. This process will take about 6-9 months.

"To put it in context, Belgium wants to get to get to 85% in the next couple of years; France 60% by 2020; Netherlands 70% - West Sussex is going to get to 98%."

Other internet service providers can also use the network, so people don't have to buy from BT.