Lilley Close residents say superfast broadband is right up their street!

The last remaining street without access to superfast broadband in a Nottinghamshire village has been brought up to speed, thanks to the Better Broadband for Nottinghamshire (BBfN) scheme.

The £29m programme, which is being led by Nottinghamshire County Council in partnership with BT, is providing access to superfast broadband to hundreds of communities in Nottinghamshire, including some of the county’s most rural areas.

In Selston, more than 5,000 homes and businesses already had access to fibre broadband as a result of the first phase of the BBfN programme and the private sector’s commercial rollout, including work carried out by BT.

Now the residents of Lilley Close have also joined the superfast broadband revolution – thanks to BBfN and the street’s new green roadside fibre broadband cabinet.

Sue Murphy is amongst the first residents to take advantage of the availability of superfast broadband in Lilley Close.

Sue said: “We used to live in another part of Selston which had good broadband and never envisaged not having similar availability when we moved. However, we could only get download speeds of around 1Mbps at Lilley Close, which meant working from home was tricky with so many services that companies opt for now, such as MS Lync and voip call services, only available online. Watching on-demand TV or movies was impossible, unless you started a download in the morning to watch that evening.”

Sue transferred to a new superfast service in June this year and has seen a massive difference.

She added, “The speed increase has been huge. For work, I no longer get dropped calls and the strength of my connection is stronger, even during peak times.

“It’s great for my family to be able to actually watch on-demand TV, on demand! FaceTime calls with my family are more stable and we are able to see them, pixel free and with no buffering.”

Lilley Close is one of over 130 areas in Nottinghamshire which will either get access to fibre broadband for the first time or see existing provision boosted to superfast speeds by Spring 2018 as part of phase two of the Better Broadband for Nottinghamshire (BBfN) programme.

The extension of the scheme, which began earlier this year, will cover a further 18,000 properties, in addition to the 62,000 homes and businesses receiving fibre broadband from BBfN phase one.

Councillor Diana Meale, Chair of Economic Development Committee at Nottinghamshire County Council, said: “I am sure it must have been very frustrating for people living in Lilley Close to have such poor broadband provision previously – especially as their near neighbours were well catered for – so I am delighted that those residents are amongst the first people in Nottinghamshire to benefit from the phase two of BBfN.

“BBfN is one of the biggest and most complex civil engineering projects ever carried out in Nottinghamshire, so it is inevitable that we will run into some challenges and we are extremely grateful to our delivery partner, BT, for finding an engineering solution for Lilley Close. The improvements to the infrastructure will make any future upgrades easier to deliver in the future.

"Our overall target to make superfast broadband available to 98% of the county’s homes and business by 2018 will put Nottinghamshire at the forefront of digital connectivity in the UK, putting us in pole position to attract the growth and jobs that good broadband will support.”

BBfN contract two is being funded by a number of organisations, including Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK), the D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership, BT and Nottinghamshire County Council.

Residents and businesses can find out more about the benefits of broadband and check if their property falls within the BBfN roll out areas at www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/broadband.

Broadband upgrades are not made automatically and businesses and residents will need to make arrangements with an internet service provider to access the faster fibre service once they are available.

Benefits of fibre broadband include faster download and upload speeds; the ability to access the internet via multiple devices without experiencing a slow connection, faster downloads of films and music, a better online gaming experience, improved file sharing for businesses, solutions based on Cloud computing and being able to work more flexibly.