More than 47,000 homes and businesses in Yorkshire’s East Riding will be able to access speeds above 24Mbps within three years.
A £14m deal between East Riding of Yorkshire Council and BT Openreach will more than double the reach of fibre-enhanced broadband by December 2015.
Broadband East Riding extends superfast broadband to 47,066 new premises, on top of the 24,264 addresses BT had planned to reach through its commercial network upgrade.
Read Recombu Digital’s guides to BT Broadband Rollout Updates and BDUKJohn Skidmore, interim director of corporate strategy and commissioning at East Riding of Yorkshire Council, said: “Having access to the internet is an important aspect of modern life with many of us using it on a daily basis whether that is personally, such as keeping in contact with family and friends through social networks, or commercially and with more and more businesses requiring a secure, reliable and faster connection in order to compete and trade.
“The council is committed to improving broadband infrastructure in the East Riding to ensure that we do all we can to support businesses, residents and visitors to the area to have access to broadband provision, especially given our largely rural locality, and hope to deliver this over the coming years through the contract with BT.”
Most of the East Riding will receive download speeds from 24Mbps to 80Mbps using FTTC (fibre to the cabinet), but a some will be able to get up to 330Mbps with ultrafast FTTP (fibre to the premises).
FTTP will be available as the upgrade rolls out in some business areas, and others will be able to order it using BT’s FoD (FTTP on Demand).
Broadband East Riding is funded through £4m from BT, with the remainder from the government’s BDUK fund, the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and East Riding of Yorkshire Council.
Bill Murphy, BT’s managing director for Next Generation Access, said: “Faster broadband breaks down the barriers to doing business in the digital world like online trading, which helps to empower small businesses to find new markets, sell new products, try new models and compete on an equal footing with larger businesses.
“This project is vital to the future economic strength of the whole of East Riding. It will go beyond BT’s and other suppliers’ commercial roll-outs of fibre broadband and take faster broadband to areas which are technically and economically more challenging.”
The Broadband East Riding project ignores the city of Hull, which receives broadband and phone services from Kingston Communications instead of BT.
Cover image: eamoncurry123/Flickr
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