North Yorkshire has declared that it wants every home and business property in the region to get superfast fibre-based broadband.
North Yorkshire County Council executive’s formally approved a further £3 million, which will extend the previous 90 per cent target to 100 per cent.
By 2018, every firm and family in North Yorks will be able to access speeds of 25Mbps or more, mainly delivered by FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) connections installed by BT.
County Councillor Carl Les, the chairman of Superfast North Yorkshire and deputy leader of the county council said: “This is a massive step forward in our aim to establish high speed broadband accessibility for 100 per cent of North Yorkshire by the end of 2017.
“With this extra funding, we will be able to penetrate to the more remote parts of our very rural county, to communities and businesses which hitherto had little hope of reaping the advantages and rewards of high speed internet access.”
Superfast North Yorkshire is on track to hit its original 90 per cent coverage target by the end of October this year, despite workers running into some badger-related blues last year.
The remaining 10 per cent, living in remote and hard to reach areas, will take longer to be connected owing to geographical challenges.
The £3 million spent by the local authority matches £3 million from the government’s latest round of BDUK (Broadband Delivery for the UK) funding. An extra £2 million comes from the ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) and BT is also contributing a further £2 million.
Over £46 million, a mixture of public and private investment, has been spent on upgrading broadband connections in North Yorkshire.
Newly developed small cabinets, capable of being attached to telegraph poles, will allow BT to penetrate the more remote parts of the county, such as parts of the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors national parks. While this is great news for North Yorks residents, these cabinets could be deployed in other BDUK projects, extending the superfast footprint elsewhere in the UK.
The great majority of superfast connections in North Yorkshire will be FTTC-based, while some lucky locations will get FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) lines.
BT’s FTTC lines currently provide top download speeds of 80Mbps and maximum upload speeds of 20Mbps. The speed you actually get depends greatly on your distance from your street cabinet. BT’s FTTP lines don’t suffer from the same distance difference, providing download speeds of up to 330Mbps and upload speeds of 30Mbps.
Trials of vectoring and G.fast technologies look to increase the top speeds possible on FTTC lines are currently taking place. BT has yet to announce if and when these technologies will benefit consumers.
BT’s FTTP on Demand programme, where customers can pay to upgrade an FTTC line to FTTP, looks to remain business-only for the time being, as well as pretty expensive.
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