News for Tool Hire, Equipment Hire & Plant Hire and Rental Professionals

Busy with broadband

28 April 2021

Busy with broadband

Whenever hirers tell me they are busy, which is frequently, I’ve been asking them what’s driving it. Some of the reasons given are the resurgent house building market and on-going demand from people improving their homes using funds that would otherwise have gone towards a summer holiday overseas.

Another factor often mentioned is the work involved in digging up the ground to install broadband services, and this is now set to expand further. 

More than 1,000,000 hard-to-reach homes and businesses will have gigabit broadband made available to them in the first phase of a £5bn government infrastructure project.

Dubbed Project Gigabit, it will prioritise areas that currently have slow connections and which would otherwise have been left behind in broadband companies’ rollout plans.

Available speeds will increase to 1,000 megabits or one gigabit per second. Contracts for work in the first areas will go to tender in the spring with work due to commence in the first half of 2022.

Up to £110m will also be made available to connect public sector buildings, such as GP surgeries, libraries and schools, in remote areas.

The government says this will ease the strain on households where several people need fast broadband for working at home and other purposes like education.

Up to 510,000 homes and businesses in Cambridgeshire, Cornwall, Cumbria, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Northumberland, South Tyneside and Tees Valley will be the first to benefit. 

• Read about one hirer that has already seen a boom in broadband related business here

Photo: Anne Verschraagen/Pixabay


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