Grant to support West Oxfordshire fibre broadband rollout

Fibre optic broadband is set to be rolled out in West Oxfordshire after a local organisation won a £1.5 million grant to support the deployment.

Cotswold Broadband will use the money from the government's Rural Community Broadband Fund to extend super-fast broadband coverage to local homes and businesses, many of which are stuck with slow upload and download speeds.

The plan will utilise fibre optic cables already laid alongside the railway line through West Oxfordshire by Network Rail, reports the Oxford Times.

Founder and director of Cotswold Broadband Hugo Pickering, who lives in the local hamlet of Lyneham, explained: "There are so-called nodes at stations along the railway line from Oxford to Moreton-in-Marsh from which we can run fibre optic cable directly into homes and businesses."

Cotswold Broadband is aiming to create an open access fibre-to-the-premises network connecting 90 per cent of commercial and residential properties in and around the Chipping Norton area.

It claims this project will deliver future-proof connectivity equal to any town or city in the UK.