The first homes and businesses in Blaby District to benefit from the county council’s £18.8m Superfast Leicestershire partnership with BT can now get high-speed fibre broadband.
New green roadside cabinets have been installed to make the new technology available to parts of Countesthorpe, Huncote and Whetstone.
More than 250 additional households and businesses across the three areas are now able to contact their internet service provider to sign up for fibre broadband – and the roll-out continues.
It builds upon BT’s extensive commercial roll-out in Blaby District, which has already made fibre broadband available to more than 53,000 homes and businesses.
Blaby District Council leader Ernie White said:
Cllr Ernie White: Fantastic news for residents and business
“This is fantastic news for residents and business owners in our district. I’m pleased to see superfast broadband is available to more properties in the three villages, and look forward to it being rolled out further across the rest of the area.”
Pam Posnett, the county council’s cabinet member for broadband, said:
“It’s great that we’ve started work in Blaby.
Superfast broadband makes a real difference to the strength of our communities and local economy and I look forward to hitting our eventual target of 62,000.”
Steve Henderson, BT’s regional director of next generation access, said:
“Online shopping is increasingly big business with experts predicting nearly five billion pounds will be spent online during the festive period this year.
It’s therefore extremely pleasing that more and more homes and businesses in the Blaby district are now well placed to take advantage of their first Christmas with superfast speeds.”
The Superfast Leicestershire partnership has already provided more than 10,000 homes and businesses across Leicestershire with access to fibre broadband.
By the end of March 2016, it’s anticipated more than 62,000 premises in the county, including more than 6,400 in the Blaby District, will have access due to the programme.
The high-speed network is available on an open, wholesale basis to all internet service providers, offering Leicestershire households and businesses the benefit of real choice from a highly competitive market.
Funding
Blaby District Council is contributing £50,000 towards the Superfast Leicestershire project, along with other local authorities, with the remaining funding coming from Leicestershire County Council (£5.1m),
The Government’s Broadband Delivery UK programme (£3.4 million) and £1.2 million from the European Regional Development Fund. BT is also contributing £9.1 million towards the overall cost of the Superfast Leicestershire deployment.
So far, engineers from Openreach, BT’s local network business, have laid more than 127 kilometres of fibre cables and installed 55 new roadside fibre broadband cabinets as part of the project.
Speed benefits for all
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.
For more information about the Superfast Leicestershire project, visit www.superfastleicestershire.org.uk
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