Digital Durham joins local community in Trimdon to mark the arrival of superfast broadband
More than 2,500 local homes and businesses can now benefit from faster broadband speeds
News welcomed by Phil Wilson MP
Digital Durham joined the local community in Trimdon Village Hall today, to mark the arrival of fibre broadband, which is now available to more than 2,500 local homes and businesses in the area.
Seven of eight planned fibre broadband cabinets in Trimdon have already been installed as part of the Digital Durham programme, with a further upgrade to bring the high speed technology to another 300 premises set to be completed by Summer 2015
Trimdon Village, Trimdon Colliery, Trimdon Station, Trimdon Grange and Deaf Hill will all benefit, with the majority of broadband users who take up the service expected to achieve superfast broadband speeds well in excess of 30Mbps.
The Digital Durham investment was welcomed by Phil Wilson, MP, who described it as a huge boost for the area.
He said: “This is a huge boost for Trimdon. People living and working here can now benefit from superfast broadband speeds which I have no doubt will revolutionise the way they use the internet.
“Whether it makes working or running a small business from home a possibility or enables school children to complete homework tasks more effectively or simply lets people enjoy the latest methods of home entertainment, superfast broadband is an option we should all be exploring.
“I would encourage people to contact their preferred internet provider to find out how they can place an order.”
Digital Durham is a £25 million initiative, which builds on BT’s £2.5 billion UK-wide commercial roll-out, to transform broadband speeds for businesses and residents across County Durham, Gateshead, Sunderland and the Tees Valley.
In April 2013 a partnership of eight local authorities, including Durham County Council, agreed a deal with BT to extend high-speed fibre broadband availability to around 94 per cent of premises by the end of 2016. It is also aiming to provide a minimum of 2Mbps broadband speeds for all within the programme area.
To bring the new technology to Trimdon, more than 20 engineers from Openreach, BT’s local network businesses, have clocked up thousands of man hours of work to deploy seven new fibre broadband cabinets, 30 kilometres of underground cable and around 3,000 kilometres of optical fibre – more than 80 times the distance from Trimdon to Durham City Centre, and back again.
Cllr Jane Brown, Cabinet member for corporate services at Durham County Council, also attended the event. She said: “This is great news for Trimdon and it was a pleasure to attend the launch event and hear how high-speed broadband will provide major benefits to residents in the village as well as those in surrounding communities.
“Increased broadband speeds are vital to the way we communicate and will help the county’s economy grow and prosper. The advantages for residents, businesses and education are huge and will offer new and exciting opportunities in terms of regeneration and job creation.”
The Digital Durham broadband programme is delivered by Durham County Council and BT. BT is contributing £5.9 million towards fibre deployment in “non-commercial” areas with Durham County Council and Gateshead Council investing £7.8 million plus a £9.1 million share of Government funding from Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK). A further £1.3 million contribution has been invested by public sector partners in Sunderland and Tees Valley.
In February this year more than £1 million of further funding was secured from the Rural Community Broadband Fund which will be invested to extend fibre broadband coverage in the Durham and Tees Valley areas.
The funding, along with an additional investment from BT, will enable Digital Durham to extend the reach of next generation fibre broadband coverage to 98 per cent of County Durham homes and businesses.
The Government recently announced that 1.5 million UK homes and business can now access superfast broadband as a result of their UK wide BDUK rollout programme.
Simon Roberson, BT’s North East regional partnership director, added: “The internet plays an ever-increasing part in all our daily lives at work, school and home. It’s great that people in Trimdon will now be able to use it more quickly and easily with superfast broadband, thanks to our partnership with Digital Durham.”
Fibre broadband 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. It will also improve access to new job opportunities, and make it easier to shop around for cheaper services.
The benefits are also considerable for businesses, which can do much more in far less time. Firms can speed up file and data transfers, collaborate with colleagues and customers on conference or video calls or swap their hardware and expensive software licenses for files, processing power and software from cloud computing. Staff can work as effectively from home as they would in the office.
Current plans will see most of the programme area receive fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) technology, where the fibre runs from the telephone exchange as far as the nearest BT street cabinet. It can deliver download speeds of up to 80Mbps and upload speeds of up to 20Mbps. 1
Fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) technology where the fibre runs all the way to the home or business - delivering speeds of up to 330Mbps 2 – will also be deployed in certain areas.
Unlike other companies, Openreach offers fibre broadband access to all service providers on an open, wholesale basis, which underpins a competitive market and delivers real customer choice.
For more information about the Digital Durham programme please visit www.digitaldurham.org.
ENDS
180Mbps and 330Mbps are top wholesale speeds. Internet service providers (ISPs) may use different speeds in their advertising. Individual line speeds will depend on network infrastructure and the service chosen by the ISP
2 Openreach will levy an installation charge for FTTP on demand. It will be up to service providers to decide whether they pass that on to businesses or consumers wishing to use the product.
Notes to Editors:
Superfast Britain is a Government investment of £1.08bn in broadband and communication infrastructure across the UK. Run by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, this investment helps businesses to grow, creates jobs and will make Britain more competitive in the global race. The portfolio comprises three linked programmes:
• £780m to extend superfast broadband to 95% of the UK by 2017
• £150m to provide high speed broadband to businesses in 22 cities
• £150m to improve quality and coverage of mobile phone and basic data network services
Administered on behalf of Government by Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK), Superfast Britain is transforming Britain by promoting growth, enabling skills and learning, and improving quality of life.
For further information: https://www.gov.uk/broadband-delivery-uk
About Digital Durham
The Digital Durham programme‘s vision is to improve the economic and social wellbeing of residents, by enabling a greater access to digital services through the provision of fibre broadband and other ground breaking technologies to businesses, homes and communities in County Durham, Gateshead, Sunderland and the five Tees Valley areas.
Working in partnership with BT, we aim to bring faster broadband to those areas that are outside of any commercial rollout plans. By mid 2016, we aim for at least 90% of properties to have a minimum of 24 Mbps and all premises at least 2 Mbps; and the remaining 10% to have 24 Mbps by the end of 2017.
