This week’s broadband rollout news showed there are more ways to skin the superfast cat, whether you dig it yourself like the folk of rural Lancashire’s B4RN, wait for BT’s juggernaut to roll through your streets, or local councils working together like South Yorkshire’s Digital Region.
Welcome to Broadband Rollout Roundup for the week ending November 23, 2012.
Lancashire diggers light up first ultrafast fibre users
Pioneering ‘dig-to-a-Gig’ rural broadband project B4RN has activated the first part of its 1Gbps network in the Vale of Lune.
Broadband For the Rural North is getting the community to dig and install its own fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network, bypassing bureaucratic roadblocks with a ‘just dig it attitude’.
This week saw fibre to the first 14 premises ‘lit up’ in the network’s hub village, Quernmore, with the village of Arkholme just weeks away from a thousand-fold increase in its available internet speeds.
B4RN also recently inaugurated the 128km fibre connection to the rest of the world via Manchester’s Telecity, and will be continuing to dig and install through the winter months.
BT’s superfast fibre switched on for more than 75,000
Fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) is now in reach of more than 75,000 new homes and businesses in England and Scotland.
BT Openreach has activated exchanges and is completing the installation of FTTC street cabinets in Sunderland, North Ayrshire and the Scottish Borders.
In Sunderland, more than 59,000 locations will be able to access speeds up to 80Mbps downstream and 20Mbps upstream from the Sunderland, Sunderland North, Ryhope and Washington exchanges.
In the Scottish Borders, more than 4,200 places in Peebles are now in reach of superfast broadband, and Ardrossan and Saltcoats are the first locations in North Ayrshire to get a superfast upgrade, reaching more than 13,400 premises.
South Yorkshire lists more superfast postcode lottery winners
Digital Region’s fibre-to-the-cabinet network has been busy hooking up more locations in Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield.
The 350-mile fibre optic network has connected more street cabinets to its associated ISPs for home and business broadband at an average download speed of 37Mbps.
This week’s winners are:
- Barnsley: S70 4HJ, S70 5BZ, S70 5AW, S70 5PX
- Doncaster: DN6 8PU, DN6 8JP, DN6 8JL, DN6 8HP
- Rotherham: S65 2UR, S65 2SA, S65 2SD, S65 2SD, S65 2UX
- Sheffield: S5 8XA, S5 8YD
Image: David Munro
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