High-speed fibre broadband is now available to more than 60,000 homes and businesses under the Connecting Cheshire Partnership, providing faster and more reliable broadband services across Cheshire.
Many rural areas are now joining the fibre fast lane and seeing a major increase in broadband speeds, often ten times their previous speeds. In some cases speeds of up to 80mbps* are now available for premises close to the 320 new roadside fibre-optic cabinets installed by the partnership to date.
The expansion is part of a £28.5 million project between BT and four Cheshire Councils – Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester, Halton, and Warrington – rolling out high-speed fibre broadband across the county. They are working in addition to the private sector’s commercial programmes to reach 80,000 premises with faster and more reliable broadband by the end of June this year. This will bring the total figure for Connecting Cheshire and commercial roll-out to 96 per cent coverage across Cheshire.
A second phase roll-out is under development which will see an additional 10,000 premises reached by the end of 2017, to provide more rural areas with much needed faster speeds.
The latest green street cabinet containing the fibre connections has just been switched on at Lymm, near Warrington. Other recent areas enabled with faster broadband include Mickle Trafford, Pickmere and Moore.
Julian Cobley, head of investment and project director for Connecting Cheshire, said: said: “Reaching as many additional premises as possible with fibre has been a hugely rewarding investment in Cheshire’s economic and social development, but we realise there is still much work remaining to ensure more homes and businesses are not left behind without fast and reliable broadband.
“Work is underway to reach as many premises as we can, so please bear with us if we haven’t got to you yet, we know how important Internet access is to everyone - young or old and to businesses in particular.”
Mike Blackburn, BT’s regional director for the North West, said: “Our engineers and planners are working as fast as they can to deliver more fibre broadband and are connecting homes and businesses every day. From unblocking underground ducting to commissioning new roadside cabinets, their hard work and dedication is making a huge contribution to this project.”
Christine East, director of local business Lymm Pet Supplies, has recently benefited from the Connecting Cheshire Women in Business programme. This was an ideal opportunity for Chris to gain up to date knowledge and benefit from the free support and advice available. Support included setting up an electronic card payment system, a cloud based system for both invoicing and stock control and email marketing. When asked if she would recommend the service to others, she responded: “Absolutely! I have been able to immediately implement these tools into my business and see immediate results!”
Photo caption: BT Openreach engineer at work in Warrington Town Centre.
