Millions of pounds is set to be ploughed into helping rural Cumbrian villages banish painfully slow broadband speeds. 

That’s what BT’s Paul Cretney told delegates at a business breakfast in Carlisle on Friday.

Mr Cretney, BT senior project manager, was part of a panel of the region’s digital experts who gave an insight into the latest developments, and how they used digital to drive business growth.

He told delegates at in-Cumbria and Commendium’s Digital Business Breakfast that more parts of Cumbria will soon be able to benefit from superfast broadband following a multi-million pound investment.

Cumbria County Council would need to initiate a new procurement process to award a second contract to deliver extended coverage through this funding.

The funding is comprised £2.86M of BDUK funding to be matched with a further £2.86M to give a total funding package of £5.72M.

This state aid intervention is set to be confirmed by the end of the month.

The Connecting Cumbria Phase 2 Project is aiming to extend the availability of Superfast Broadband across Cumbria with an additional 2 per cent, approximately 5000 homes and/or businesses, by the end of 2017.

Mr Cretney said: “399 fibre structures are live and 150 more structures will be build to complete the programme, most of this is work already underway so we are looking good to complete phase one on schedule – December 2015.

“Next, in phase two, we will try and work out how to get to the hardest to reach areas. We need to work out the best ways to get to them.”

This follows BT’s announcement earlier last week that it will “never say no” to providing faster broadband for rural communities in the north west.

It announced its ambition for a new universal minimum broadband speed of 5-10 Megabits per second (Mbps) for every home and business, subject to regulatory support.

BT chief executive Gavin Patterson said: “For the past five years, the UK has been the largest digital economy in the G20, by percentage of GDP. We think the UK has an even brighter future ahead if we make the right decisions today. "We want to forge an ultrafast future for Britain and stand ready to help government deliver the broadband speeds necessary for every property to enjoy modern day internet services, such as high definition TV streaming and cloud computing.”

Other speakers at the business breakfast included Oliver Warnes, who runs Web Industry, Sean Wright who left his previous career to launch Cumbria Tech Repair a year ago, and Jason Brownlee - the founder of social media analysis firm Colourtext.

Penrith-based IT and digital support company Commendium sponsored and spoke at the event.

Mr Brownlee gave delegates an insight into how local businesses use social media effectively, revealing that Gretna Green Famous Blacksmith Shop rank as one of the best for interacting on Facebook.

He said: “We want to help media companies work harder for local businesses and integrate social media effectively.

“The information we use is freely available from Twitter and Facebook.”

Colourtext searches social media to provide leads for businesses, as well as analysing interactions and statistics.