Cabinet considered a progress report on the development and delivery of the Cheshire, Halton and Warrington Local Broadband Plan.
The Connecting Cheshire Partnership was ahead of schedule to deliver fibre broadband with speeds in excess of 24Mbs to a further 80,000 homes and businesses by the summer of 2015, increasing high speed broadband coverage to 96% of premises.
The survey work would be completed in December, with an announcement of which localities would be included in the first phase of the roll-out. The telecommunications partner, BT, anticipated that the first of five deployment phases would commence in late 2013.
Peninsula Enterprise (working with Groundwork Cheshire) had been selected as a partner to deliver a tailored programme of business support for eligible Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) to help them exploit the benefits of faster broadband and digital technology.
RESOLVED
That the project update be noted and the appointment of Peninsula Enterprise to deliver the Connecting Cheshire Superfast Business Support Programme be endorsed.