Super-fast broadband has arrived in West Ayton BT announced today. Hundreds of homes and businesses in the village already have access to the high-speed technology – and this figure will increase to more than 2,500 as engineers complete the local upgrade in the weeks ahead.
Today, the BT investment was welcomed by Robert Goodwill, MP for Scarborough and Whitby, who described it as great news for the village. He said: “Super-fast fibre broadband in West Ayton will benefit both local residents and businesses. Broadband is an essential part of Scarborough’s present and future. It’s vital that we embrace this latest generation of technology in order for our local economy to remain competitive.
“Better, faster communications boost businesses, helping them grow, and create more jobs. What’s more, local residents can enjoy faster browsing and downloading at home. This is great news for the whole village and I look forward to fibre being rolled out across the rest of my constituency.”
West Ayton follows many locations across North Yorkshire where fibre broadband is already available and by the end of Spring 2014 more than 172,000 homes and businesses in the County will be able to benefit from BT’s £2.5 billion fibre programme.
BT is also working in partnership with the public sector to reach parts of North Yorkshire that lie outside its commercial footprint.
Superfast North Yorkshire, an ambitious partnership led by North Yorkshire County Council and BT, aims to give 90 per cent of North Yorkshire’s homes and businesses access to fibre broadband by the end of 20141.
North Yorkshire is the first county in the UK successfully to deploy Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) funds2. This, alongside ERDF funding, will be used to extend the roll-out of fibre broadband across the county. The project will reach those areas outside of BT’s commercial roll-out using a partnership approach to ensure all communities have access to the fastest possible broadband speeds.
Tom Keeney, BT’s regional director for Yorkshire and the Humber, said: “Our roll-out of fibre broadband continues at a world class pace in North Yorkshire with West Ayton the latest place to benefit. More than 1.7 million homes and businesses across the UK are already using our new fibre network. Local residents now have the opportunity to join them and find out for themselves why there’s such a buzz about fibre broadband.
“Whatever you’re doing online, you can do it better and faster with fibre. Whether it’s shopping, downloading music and video, watching TV, social networking, studying or researching homework, once you’ve switched to fibre you’ll never look back. Outside the home, it also has huge potential for public services and city businesses.
“Businesses working better with fibre tell us it’s helping them in a wealth of ways, from day to day activities like downloading software, collaborating with clients and moving large data files around to big business decisions like expanding the workforce or introducing better quality IT services at less cost.
“BT is not just building a national communications network fit for 21st century Britain; we’re doing it at speed, making fibre broadband available to around 80,000 more premises a week.
BT’s fibre footprint currently passes more than 16 million UK homes and businesses. It’s due to pass two-thirds of UK premises – around 19 million premises – by the end of Spring 2014, at least 18 months ahead of the original timetable.3
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. In addition to download speeds of up to 80Mbps, FTTC also delivers upload speeds of up to 20Mbps4 — and could deliver even faster speeds in the future.
Openreach has also started to make fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) technology, where the fibre runs all the way to the home or business, commercially available on demand5 in certain areas where fibre broadband has been deployed, and plans to expand access in due course. FTTP-on-demand offers the top current download speed of 330Mbps2.
According to the regulator Ofcom, the current average UK residential broadband download speed is 14.7Mbps.
Fibre broadband at home means everyone in the family can do their own thing online, all at the same time, whether it’s downloading music in minutes or watching catch-up TV; streaming HD or 3D movies in the few minutes it takes to make popcorn; or posting photos and videos to social networking sites in seconds. Fibre improves the quality of online experiences and supports exciting new developments in internet services.
The benefits are also considerable for businesses, which can do much more in far less time. Firms can speed up file and data transfers, collaborate with colleagues and customers on conference or video calls or swap their hardware and expensive software licenses for files, processing power and software from cloud computing. Staff can work as effectively from home as they would in the office.
Unlike other companies, Openreach offers fibre broadband access to all service providers on an open, wholesale basis, underpinning a competitive market. For further
information on Openreach’s fibre broadband programme visit www.superfast-openreach.co.uk