North Yorkshire village takes super-fast broadband right to the heart of the community
Nearly one in five homes and businesses in Burton Leonard sign up to fibre broadband in just three months
A North Yorkshire village has taken super-fast fibre based broadband right to the heart of the community.
The rural community of Burton Leonard has embraced the new high speed technology with nearly one in five customers already signed up since Superfast North Yorkshire brought it to the village just three months ago.
And demand is still continuing to grow as people living and working in the village continue to place orders for the sophisticated technology which will see their speeds increase from an average of 1Mbps to speeds of up to 80Mbps.
Julian Smith, MP for Skipton and Ripon, said: “The roll out of fibre based broadband is very important for communities across North Yorkshire and I am delighted to see that process is well underway. It is vital that we also take of advantage of the technology as it arrives. Residents and businesses in Burton Leonard have understood the benefits fibre broadband can bring them and are now experiencing those benefits for themselves.”
Local businesses in the village are already finding that the higher broadband speeds have changed and improved the way they work.
Martyn King, partner at Graphic Design Partnership who are based in Burton Leonard, said: “Much of our business involves sending and receiving large digital image and artwork files to and from clients and printers. Before we had fibre broadband this was a frustrating process because we were hampered by poor broadband speeds, typical of such a rural area.
“Superfast broadband now means we can transfer large files to cloud-based file-sharing sites very quickly which has improved the experience for our clients and made the business more efficient. Working in a rural location is now much easier."
Stewart Hymas, managing director of Alfred Hymas, a haulage business based in the village, said: “We need to track the movements of our trucks’ online and run detailed reports. Before this was incredibly slow but with fibre broadband it is almost instantaneous which not only makes us more efficient but enables us to give our clients real time information on our trucks progress.”
Superfast North Yorkshire, a partnership led by North Yorkshire County Council and BT, is behind the arrival of fibre broadband in Burton Leonard and at more than 20,000 other homes and businesses across the county. The partnership builds on BT’s own commercial roll-out of fibre broadband in the county so that 90 per cent of North Yorkshire’s homes and businesses will have access to fibre broadband by the end of 2014 1 .
Cllr Margaret Atkinson, Cabinet Member for Rural Affairs at Harrogate Borough Council and North Yorkshire County Council member, said: “In Burton Leonard and the county as a whole, demand is continuing to grow as more and more people are signing up for this exciting technology. Fibre broadband is a huge boost to many rural areas and helps small rural businesses to compete on a level playing field with those in urban areas.”
The majority of premises in North Yorkshire will be getting access to some of the best broadband speeds in the country via Superfast North Yorkshire and BT’s associated commercial roll-out. The high speed service will boost the competitiveness of local firms and offer new ways of flexible working, entertainment and learning opportunities for local residents. Fibre broadband gives users the ability to run multiple bandwidth-hungry applications at the same time such as sending and receiving large amounts of data much more quickly and efficiently. At home, fibre broadband enables a family to simultaneously download a movie, watch a TV replay service, surf the internet and play games online all at the same time. A whole album can be downloaded in less than 30 seconds and a feature length HD movie in less than 10 minutes, whilst high-resolution photos can be uploaded to Facebook in seconds.
BT was chosen as the private sector partner in the project following an extensive selection process by the county council. The company is contributing £10 million towards fibre deployment in “non-commercial” areas whilst the county council is using its £17.8 million share of BDUK funds and a further £8.6 million coming from the European Regional Development Fund 2 .
To help businesses in North Yorkshire take advantage of the faster broadband speeds a support service has been put in place to provide free services such as training workshops, skills master classes and business development events. This will demonstrate how faster broadband connections can help to develop business and increase profits by maximising efficiency and productivity. For more information call 0845 0020021 or email: enquiries@sfny.co.uk.
For further information on the Superfast North Yorkshire programme visit www.superfastnorthyorkshire.com
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The majority of North Yorkshire homes & businesses will have access to speeds of at least 25Mbps by the end of 2014. Openreach, BT’s local network business, is primarily deploying fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) technology, where the fibre runs from the exchange to a local roadside cabinet. FTTC offers download speeds of up to 80 megabits per second (Mbps) and upload speeds of up to 20Mbps and could deliver even faster speeds in the future.
ISPs may use different speeds in their advertising. Individual line speeds will depend on network infrastructure and the service chosen by the ISP
The Superfast North Yorkshire project is part financed by the European Regional Development Fund Programme 2007 to 2013. The Department for Communities and Local Government is the managing authority for the European Regional Development Fund Programme, which is one of the funds established by the European Commission to help local areas stimulate their economic development by investing in projects which will support local businesses and create jobs. For more information visit www.communities.gov.uk/erdf
About Superfast North Yorkshire
1 Superfast North Yorkshire was created in July 2012 following the signing of the contract between North Yorkshire County Council and BT, which will see a total fibre broadband investment in the county expected to reach around £70 million.
North Yorkshire is the first county in the UK successfully to deploy Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) funds, which will be used to extend the roll-out of faster broadband across the county. The project will reach those areas outside of any commercial roll-out using a partnership approach to ensure all communities have access to the fastest possible broadband speeds.
2 The Superfast North Yorkshire project is part financed by the European Regional Development Fund Programme 2007 to 2013. The Department for Communities and Local Government is the managing authority for the European Regional Development Fund Programme, which is one of the funds established by the European Commission to help local areas stimulate their economic development by investing in projects which will support local businesses and create jobs. For more information visit www.communities.gov.uk/erdf
