Superfast Leicestershire can now benefit 50,000 homes and businesses
More than 50,000 homes and businesses across the county can now benefit from fast fibre broadband thanks to the Superfast Leicestershire project.
The partnership project between Leicestershire County Council and BT is on course to bring high-speed fibre technology to more than 72,000 premises in Leicestershire by the end of 2018.
Recent areas to ‘go live’ include: Stapleton, Rearsby, Hoton, Billesdon, Gaddesby and Long Whatton. More homes and businesses have also been connected in Fleckney, Kirby Muxloe, Hathern, Syston Wymeswold, Market Bosworth and Ibstock.
Councillor Blake Pain, cabinet member for rural broadband, said: “It’s great news that we’ve already reached another milestone for this project and are continuing to support communities and businesses in reaping the benefits of access to fast broadband.”
Superfast Leicestershire is using new ‘cutting edge’ technology to help ensure hard-to-reach communities get access to faster broadband.
In Glenfield, the county’s first ‘all-in-one’ fibre broadband cabinet went live recently, providing access to download speeds of up to 80mbps for some of the 3,400 homes and businesses in the area.
The ‘Glenfield onesie’, on Tournament Road, combines the existing copper service with the new fibre technology into one cabinet. Although not suitable for all locations, a ‘onesie’ helps reduce the number of street cabinets and is less expensive to maintain, allowing savings to be reinvested in providing broadband to more communities across the county.
Steve Henderson, BT’s regional director for next generation access, said: “Superfast Leicestershire is progressing extremely well and our Openreach engineers are connecting communities across the county as quickly as possible. We’ve said from the outset that new technology will play an important part in this rollout so I’m pleased to see the very first all-in-one cabinet being installed in Leicestershire.”
There are a number of locations across Leicestershire where ‘all in one’ technology is the most suitable option available including Ibstock, Markfield and Shepshed.
The work is being carried out by Openreach, BT’s local network business, meaning people with access to the fibre network can choose from a range of internet providers and so can benefit from competitive pricing.
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.
Funding for the Superfast Leicestershire partnership (both phases) has been provided by a wide-range of organisations including the county council, BT, Broadband Delivery UK (the Government’s broadband delivery arm), the European Union, and Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership as part of its Local Growth Fund.
For more information about Superfast Leicestershire visit www.superfastleicestershire.org.uk or look out for #SuperfastLeics on Twitter.
Notes to editor
Local case studies from businesses that have benefitted from the project are available by visiting www.superfastleicestershire.org.uk/business-users/case-studies.
