Broadband boost for thousands of homes and firms
GRIMSBY and Scunthorpe will make up the bulk of the 70,000 more homes and businesses in the region set to get a broadband upgrade as part of a £24 million investment.
Openreach – the UK’s largest digital network provider - is overhauling the cabling connections for those using more than 660 service providers, including the likes of BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone and Zen.
A total of six communities will be graced with full fibre ultrafast broadband as part of the latest phase, understood to be taking place in the next six to 18 months.
Also included is the town of Leyburn, and the Yorkshire villages of Cloughton, Patrington and Tollerton. It comes as more than six million homes and businesses are now reached by the service, with more than 440,000 of them in the region.
The latest deployment will take that figure beyond the half a million mark. Robert Thorburn, Openreach’s regional director for the North, said: “Good connectivity is vital – whether it’s to work from home, access education and care services, or for gaming and streaming entertainment – and that’s why we’re investing billions across the UK to upgrade our network to 25 million premises. Nobody’s building faster, further or to a higher standard than Openreach.
“Our engineers and build partners are reaching more communities every week and we’re not just building in cities and urban areas. Many rural and hard to reach communities are already benefiting and we plan to reach many more in the coming months and years.”
Recent research by the Centre for Economics and Business Research highlighted the clear economic benefits of connecting everyone in Yorkshire and the Humber to full fibre. It estimated this would create a £3.8 billion boost to the local economy.
The company’s plans are described as fundamental to the UK Government achieving its target of delivering ‘gigabit capable’ broadband to 85 per cent of UK by 2025. Openreach plans to reach a total of 25 million premises by the end of December 2026, including more than six million in the hardestto-serve parts of the country defined by industry regulator Ofcom.