Project Gigabit
Project Gigabit is the UK Government's plan to roll out gigabit-capable broadband services across the country from April 2023.
A 'gigabit-capable connection' is a broadband service that can achieve at least 1,000 megabit (1 gigabit) per second download speed.
Funding has been allocated to upgrade connections to properties that are not expected to receive a gigabit-capable service from any planned upgrade programmes (such as those funded by commercial investment), or properties that cannot currently access a superfast broadband service of at least 30 Mbps.
The nationwide project is led and managed by Building Digital UK (BDUK, an executive agency of the Government) and not local authorities. Following a Government reshuffle in February 2023, BDUK moved to a new Department, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).
BDUK’s regular updates can be found on the Gov.UK website:
6th February 2024
BDUK announced that they have awarded a £100 million contract to CityFibre to deliver gigabit-capable broadband infrastructure to around 52,000 hard-to-reach premises in East and West Sussex, including Brighton and Hove, that are not expected to benefit from telecom providers' commercial upgrade programmes.
BDUK will lead this project and will be responsible for working with the supplier to manage the roll out.
At this stage BDUK has not published any further information about which premises will benefit, or when these connections will be installed. We understand that further details are unlikely to be released until further planning and survey work is undertaken which could take several months. Once this information is available, we understand that it will be published on the supplier’s website.
Contact
To contact BDUK please email them direct: enquiries@bduk.gov.uk
To contact DSIT please email them direct: correspondence@dsit.gov.uk