Superfast broadband for Greater Manchester region

A multi-million plan to introduce a super-fast broadband network in Greater Manchester will see the city region have the ‘best digital infrastructure in the UK’ by 2021, say local leaders.

The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) has successfully bid for more than £23 million from the government to create a local full fibre network linking across the ten boroughs.

It will see more than 1,300 public sector sites connected with so-called ‘dark fibre’ across the conurbation, including 580 local authority sites and 33 fire and rescue sites.

Full fibre networks use fibre optic cables to connect sites directly and are capable of delivering internet speeds greater than one gigabit per second.

They are also important for supporting high capacity mobile broadband networks, particularly future 5G mobile networks.

Mayor Andy Burnham said that connecting public sector sites with the system will ‘supercharge’ their digital capacity and revolutionise online services.

It’s thought that the network will also trigger private finance investment of more than £200m – and could be worth around £2.1bn to the Greater Manchester economy over the next 15 years.

More than 690 highways assets, such as traffic signals, pedestrian crossings and CCTV cameras, will also be connected via the network, which will enable faster response times to incidents and traffic management.

The grant funding from the Department for Digital Culture Media and Sport has to be spent by March 2021, which officers described as a ‘challenging timescale’.

It requires all the councils to individually approve the plans to enable a full fibre provider to be contracted by 1 October.

Councillor Allen Brett, leader of Rochdale Borough Council, said: “Having superfast broadband will have a transformative effect on the borough and make a huge difference to our businesses, residents and infrastructure.

“This grant from government will lead to an increase of full fibre coverage from 2% now to around 25% within three years, which is a game changer for Rochdale. Once this programme is complete, Greater Manchester will have the best high-speed digital infrastructure coverage of any city-region in the UK.

“Rochdale, along with the other Greater Manchester authorities, will now embark on a collective procurement exercise to appoint a company to deliver the network. The project is set for completion by March 2021.”

The GMCA is made up of the ten Greater Manchester councils and Mayor, who work with other local services, businesses, communities and other partners to improve the city-region.

Charlotte Green, Local Democracy Reporter