15
December
2016
|
16:00
Europe/London

Thorner residents unite to get ultrafast broadband

Summary
Homes and businesses in the rural village of Thorner are looking forward to an ultrafast future, after local residents took matters into their own hands to secure high-speed fibre broadband.

THORNER RESIDENTS UNITE TO GET ULTRAFAST BROADBAND

Homes and businesses in the rural village of Thorner are looking forward to an ultrafast future, after local residents took matters into their own hands to secure high-speed fibre broadband.

People living on and around Carr Lane, on the outskirts of the village, approached BT for help because they were affected by slow download speeds.

They quickly raised enough money to jointly fund the installation which will provide access to fibre-to-the-premises technology (FTTP) offering speeds up to 330Mbps.The work will be carried out by Openreach, BT’s local network business, which is also helping to fund the project.

The development of seven properties is too far from the local telephone exchange to benefit from fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) superfast broadband technology which some of their neighbours already have access to. Instead, engineers will make a connection using even faster FTTP, where the optical fibre runs directly into the home.

The ultrafast download speeds available will mean things like streaming high-definition TV or a movie online, quickly uploading larger files in seconds, and using video-calling services, such as Skype, will be possible.

Thorner resident Stephen Feldman, who led the community campaign, said: “It is going to benefit everybody who lives here massively.

“The majority of people living here are able to work from home but are being held back because of the slow broadband speeds. Working from home is ideal for people like ourselves living in a rural setting – it gives you more flexible working hours, cuts down on long commutes and creates a better work-life balance.

“There is also a huge frustration factor when you’re trying to do things like download a movie or watch TV on demand, nothing works properly and often the connection goes down. If I want to download a movie I have to do it overnight to watch the next day. Being able to benefit from faster download speeds becomes more important as more home devices connect to the internet and so many things are accessed or delivered online.”

“Having fibre will also help the children living here who need to be online to complete homework assignments or access educational recourses to help them with their schoolwork.”

Kim Mears, Openreach’s managing director for infrastructure delivery, said: “It is great to be able to work with communities like Thorner village to find a fibre broadband solution. We’re working on hundreds of similar community fibre partnership programmes across the UK, which are bringing faster fibre internet access to even more homes and businesses. Openreach is committed to making fibre broadband as widely available as possible in the UK to allow families and businesses to do even more online.”

The agreement is another success for BT’s Community Fibre Partnership scheme, with more than 90 communities in the UK now connected to the fibre broadband network after getting in touch directly with the company. As a result, more than 18,000 premises that we not included in any other broadband roll-out plan now have access to fibre,with dozens more similar contracts in progress set to extend that reach to around 35,000 homes and businesses.

Because all of the work is being carried out by Openreach, BT’s local network business, residents in all of the CFP areas will have a choice of internet service providers and be able to choose from a wide range of competitive packages.

The contract signed by the Thorner residents is independent of the Superfast West Yorkshire broadband partnership and BT’s own commercial rollout.

According to thinkbroadband.com, just under 90 per cent of homes and businesses in West Yorkshire have access to superfast broadband.[1] Across the country, more than nine out of ten UK homes now have access to superfast broadband, with a new property being able to connect, on average, every 30 seconds.

The rollout of superfast broadband in the UK is one of the quickest and most ambitious anywhere in the world with more homes in the UK now using superfast broadband than in Germany, France, Italy or Spain.

For more information about entering into a community fibre partnership with BT, please visit www.communityfibre.bt.com.

[1]http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/7584-december-update-on-uk-superfast-and-ultrafast-broadband-coverage.html