Boris Johnson announces high speed connection 'Project Gigabit' for rural Dorset

A new £6million broadband project for rural County Dorset has been announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The PM was in North Dorset on Tuesday to oversee preparations for connecting several thousand 'hard to reach' rural homes in Dorset.

The high speed connection contract was awarded to Wessex Internet. The Project Gigabit funding was announced by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport.

Confirming the first home will be connected by the end of the year, with an expected completion date of 2025. 

The project will cover the rural outskirts of towns, villages and hamlets across the region from Sherborne to Verwood and Shaftesbury to Blandford Forum.

The Department revealed that in last five months alone, one million premises have been connected to gigabit networks, describing this as: "a tremendous achievement given the first million premises took more than eight years to connect.

"The rate at which gigabit-capable internet connections are installed has increased threefold, with companies like Wessex Internet connecting premises at a rate of one every seven seconds.

To date, more than 740,000 premises have been connected through government funding.

Project Gigabit is the government’s record £5 billion scheme to bring the fastest, most reliable broadband to areas considered too difficult or expensive to connect under the broadband industry’s commercial plans. Government funding will complement industry investment to ensure that these harder to reach areas benefit from the same gigabit broadband as the rest of the country.

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Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “From Sherbourne to Stirling, lightning-fast broadband is levelling up towns and villages across the country.

“In just three years we have increased the coverage of gigabit broadband from seven per cent of households to 70%, and I am proud that today more than 20 million households, businesses and organisations are able to tap into rapid and reliable internet, unleashing their potential, creating opportunities and driving growth across the country.”

Digital Secretary Nadine Dorries said: “Today we enter an exciting new phase of our £5 billion Project Gigabit digital connectivity programme by signing our first major contract in Dorset. Thousands of hard-to-reach homes and businesses in the region will get access to faster connections and join the 20 million properties we’ve helped connect over the last three years."

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