Wakefield community signs deal with bt to bring high-speed broadband to local residents
Superfast broadband is coming to the village of Woolley, near Wakefield, after a successful community campaign for faster speeds.
More than 130 households and businesses will be able to order new high-speed fibre broadband services for the first time, thanks to a partnership between the community and BT.
The co-funded deal at Woolley is expected to see the first residents get the higher speeds within the next 12 months. It is part of BT’s Community Fibre Partnerships (CFP) programme, which has already seen BT sign agreements with nearly300 local communities and organisations to bring fibre broadband to some of the UK’s most challenging areas.
The cost of delivering the new technology has been covered by investment from Openreach, the local network business which is part of BT Group, and the UK Government’s Better Broadband Subsidy Scheme, which supports households and businesses not covered by any current fibre broadband rollout plans and who get speeds below 2Mbps.
The new network, offering download speeds of up to 80Mbps**, will be particularly welcomed by households wanting to connect several devices to the internet at the same time. Whether it’s downloading the latest TV box sets, Skyping friends and family, shopping or researching online, speedy access to the internet has never been more important.
Woolley residents Andrew Jones and Jane Lister led the campaign for the
upgrades on behalf of the Woolley Village Residents Association.
Andrew said: “Broadband speeds are more important now than ever before and this is going to make a massive difference to people living here. Once the work is complete, the technology will better support people who want to work from home, we will be able to stream many of the TV shows we've not been able to watch and won’t have to wait hours to download software updates. Everyone is counting down the days until the upgrade.”
Tom Keeney, chairman of BT’s regional board in Yorkshire and the Humber, said:“We are working with communities, such as Woolley Village, up and down the region. Rolling out fibre broadband to as many communities as possible is one of our top priorities and working directly with a group of residents like this is just one of the ways of making that happen. People here have shown great determination to go ahead with this exciting project. Fibre broadband opens up endless opportunities for those living here.
“Our ambition is to ‘never say no’ to any community that wants superfast broadband, and we’re really pleased we found a way forward in Woolley which testifies to that. We’re keen to have conversations with other communities who might benefit from this approach.”
Steve Haines, managing director for Openreach, said: “It is great to be able to work with communities like Woolley 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.”
Openreach offers fibre broadband access to all service providers on an open, wholesale basis, which means that local households and businesses can benefit from competitive pricing and products from a wide range of providers.
More than nine out of ten premises across the UK can access superfast broadband speeds. For more details on the roll-out visit
https://www.homeandwork.openreach.co.uk/when-can-i-get-fibre.aspx
To find out how to help bring superfast broadband to your community visit
