Derbyshire’s digital divide targeted in £900k broadband boost

Derbyshire County Council cabinet members have agreed to pump £900,000 into a project to improve digital connectivity in communities where broadband speeds are lowest.

Around 32,000 homes and businesses across the county still receive less than 100mbps in areas with no prospect of commercial providers rolling out full fibre within the next three years. 

Of these, around 3,000 premises are still receiving very slow speeds of less than 10mbps making everyday activities such as streaming digital TV channels and online banking virtually impossible. 

At a recent meeting, cabinet members gave the go-ahead to use funding from the Digital Derbyshire reserves to set up two grant programmes to boost broadband speeds in premises with some of the poorest performing internet connections: 

1) The ‘Gigabit Fibre Connectivity Grant’ will provide a full fibre network to clusters of ‘hard to reach’ premises which are close to one another. 

2) The ‘Interim Connectivity Grant’ will focus on providing short-term solutions, such as satellite or mobile broadband, to properties which: 

• are in remote areas where delivery of a fixed full fibre network is too expensive and there is no commercial roll-out planned 

• currently use outdated copper-only lines which are only capable of a maximum of 24mbps. 

Carol Wood, Cabinet Member for Net Zero and Environment, said: 

“Decent broadband is essential to every-day life and something many of us take for granted. But we know that having a reliable internet connection is a postcode lottery with many businesses and residents in rural areas still losing out. 

“By launching these two grant programmes, we can help improve broadband speeds for lots of local people and help prevent rural communities from falling behind in the digital divide.”