The Community Fiber Partnerships scheme from Openreach (BT), which offers to help co-fund the cost of upgrading digitally isolated communities to receive their FTTC, G.fast or FTTP based superfast broadband ISP network, has now signed-up its 930th community and expects to deliver for 100,000 UK premises.
The CFP scheme is typically focused on smaller or more remote rural communities that don’t currently have access to an existing “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) network and which may not benefit from one in the near future. Essentially Openreachoffers to cover some of the cost of the new infrastructure and then the community self-funds the remaining gap.
Crucially it’s often possible for communities to then harness a number of different Government supported voucher schemes (same local authorities and devolved regions also have their own schemes), which in some cases can be enough to help cover nearly all of the funding that a community might have otherwise had to raise itself in order to get the new network installed.