Christmas gets off to a superfast start for 10,000 homes and businesses in South Yorkshire
Residents and businesses in more parts of South Yorkshire will be able to kick-start their Christmas and New Year by ordering superfast broadband - thanks to the Superfast South Yorkshire broadband programme.
More than 10,000 further households and businesses across South Yorkshire, including around 9,000 in Sheffield, are now able to benefit from fibre broadband as a direct result of the programme.
The latest Sheffield locations to benefit include Attercliffe, Burngreave, Pitsmoor, Firth Park, Norfolk Park, Heeley, Upperthorpe, Meadowhall and Broomhill. Fibre broadband will be rolled out to more locations in the coming months.
Matt Gladstone, Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council executive director for Place, who has senior responsibility for Superfast South Yorkshire , said: “This is excellent news for thousands more residents and businesses in South Yorkshire, who can now take advantage of the many benefits of fibre broadband earlier than planned.
““More and more of our lives are conducted online whether it is for shopping, learning, access to health care and other public services or even to search and apply for jobs. In an increasingly digital world fibre broadband is becoming as important as utilities like electricity and water.
“The upgrade does not happen automatically, to benefit you can contact a wide-range of broadband suppliers. More information about how to do this can be found on our website.”
. By the end of the project in 2017 the multi-million pound initiative will have made the new technology available to 103,000 properties. On average, engineers from Openreach, BT’s local network business, are switching on 27 new street cabinets and making the new fibre network available to around 3,000 more premises every month.
Tom Keeney, BT’s regional director for Yorkshire and the Humber, said: “Our lives are more connected than ever before. More and more appliances and gadgets – phones, broadband enabled TVs, tablets, games consoles, many of which will be bought as presents this Christmas – work best with a high-speed internet connection. Sharing photos with friends, streaming HD movies and video calls with family and friends can be done more quickly and effectively with this exciting technology - so now is the ideal time to make the switch to superfast broadband.”
Fibre broadband at home means everyone in the family can do their own thing online, all at the same time, whether it’s downloading music in minutes or watching catch-up TV; streaming HD or 3D movies in a few minutes; or posting photos and videos to social networking sites in seconds. Benefits for businesses include faster file and data transfers, better access to cloud computing services and software, more sophisticated web-based contact with customers and support for more flexible working.
It’s an ‘opt in’ service, but because the Openreach network is ‘open’, residents and businesses wanting to upgrade have a choice of fibre broadband providers, with more than 140 companies now operating across the UK.
Superfast South Yorkshire was formed last year as local authorities joined forces with BT in a £22 million deal to extend the availability of high-speed, fibre broadband to around 98 per cent of homes and businesses in the city region. The project is jointly funded by Sheffield City Region LEP, the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) fund and BT.The project builds upon BT’s commercial roll-out, which has already made fibre broadband available to more than 451,000 homes and businesses across South Yorkshire.
For further information on the Superfast South Yorkshire programme visit http://www.superfastsouthyorkshire.co.uk
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