The first question people moving house often ask is about local broadband speeds and increasingly many jobs are only advertised online. Access to broadband is also a major determining factor in where businesses decide to locate. It is also becoming a more common way to access many public services. Access to Superfast Broadband is therefore crucial to Northamptonshire and its future prosperity. Because of this the County Council is looking to facilitate the roll out of superfast broadband to all premises in Northamptonshire.
The county's superfast Northamptonshire project bid was submitted to BDUK last Aprila blog site. The bid will be competing with a number of others for funding. Other local authorities will also be bidding for funding in the coming months.
The vision behind the Northamptonshire bid is that everyone is able to access improved services via superfast broadband and for the county to be at the leading edge of the global digital economy. Baseline speeds have been set out in the bid, but it is anticipated that the technology will enable speeds of at least 40Mbps to be achieved and the norm. This represents genuine superfast broadband. The target is to deliver this vision by 2017.
To keep stakeholders and other interested parties abreast of developments with the superfast Northamptonshire bid, a new blog site has been set up to:
The superfast Northamptonshire blog can be found at http://superfastnorthamptonshire.wordpress.com/
An E-Petition has also been set up with the intention of getting as many names as possible to back the superfast Northamptonshire bid and send a clear message to local government showing the level of support for continued future investment in superfast broadband in Northamptonshire and across the UK. The E-petition can be found in the “How You Can Help” section of the blog.