Better broadband coming to rural Cheshire homes in UK gigabit-speed revolution

Thousands of people in rural Cheshire 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 about the government’s £5 billion Project Gigabit, the biggest broadband rollout scheme in British history, reveal that up to 74,300 rural homes and businesses in the region are in line to be connected to lightning-fast speeds.

These properties are not currently due for a gigabit upgrade from broadband companies or other public schemes. So the government is subsidising building new internet infrastructure to reach them, capable of blistering download speeds of 1,000 megabits per second. 

More than 96 per cent of premises in Cheshire already have superfast speeds of at least 30 megabits per second, which is enough to support most people’s everyday online activities today. But as technology develops and becomes more data-intensive, these connections may struggle to keep up.

Gigabit-capable connections provide the speed and reliability needed for decades to come, enabling several people to work from home, stream ultra high definition video content and play next-generation online games at the same time.

This will accelerate the country’s recovery from covid, fire up high-growth sectors such as tech and the creative industries, and bring the speed and reliability people need to start and run businesses

The government expects to invest between £85 million and £144 million to connect hard-to-reach premises in Cheshire, with the final funding amount to be confirmed when procurement begins. 

Digital Secretary Nadine Dorries said:

“Our investment today means even the most isolated farms and villages in Cheshire will be able to tap into the fastest broadband speeds.

“Families will no longer have to battle over bandwidth and it will give people in rural areas the speed, reliability and freedom to live and work flexibly, and take advantage of new technologies.”

Cheshire is one of ten English regions to benefit from today’s announcement, which will see an extra 567,000 premises connected via Project Gigabit. Other regions include Dorset, Devon, Somerset, Essex, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Lincolnshire, East Riding and North Yorkshire.

These projects put the government on track to meet its target of delivering gigabit-capable connections to 85 per cent of the UK by 2025.

Government investment and reforms are firing up commercial providers to deploy gigabit broadband rapidly across the country - from less than six per cent in 2019 to more than half of all premises today which is one of the fastest build rates in Europe.

The procurement process to deliver the connections will begin between February and April 2023, with work set to commence between January and March 2024. The exact areas that will benefit in the region will be announced after the project has gone out to tender for broadband companies to deliver them.