Selby and Ainsty MP gets up to speed on ‘Full Fibre’
Keir Mather MP recently met up with some of the Openreach engineers busy building a new Ultrafast Full Fibre broadband network across North Yorkshire.
He was given a tour of the work, which is currently making faster and more reliable ‘full fibre’ broadband available to homes and businesses in his constituency.
The tour started with a quick visit to the local telephone exchange where the MP was able to try his hand at the art of fibre splicing – where two ends of fibre optic glass cable no wider than a human hair are fused together. This delicate piece of engineering plays a vital role in Openreach’s Full Fibre network that’s already connected more than 120,000 properties across North Yorkshire – an investment of £36 million. [1]
After the Selby exchange it was a short drive to a nearby housing estate to see the ‘final stage’ of the Openreach Full Fibre network and to talk to local engineers that are delivering this game changing technology to communities across the county.
Keir Mather MP, said: “I’m pleased to see the progress being made by Openreach to deliver full fibre across my constituency and the rest of North Yorkshire. It’s vital that local people take advantage of this new technology as it becomes available.
“This is a significant local investment and great news for people living and working here in Selby and elsewhere in North Yorkshire – in both our urban and rural communities.
”I look forward to even more progress being made so that all of my constituents can have the best access to digital services for employment, education and entertainment, as soon as possible.”
The visit was hosted by Openreach Senior Manager for Fibre Build, Danny Finn, who said: “We welcomed the opportunity to give Keir a tour of our ultrafast network and explain more about the build. Our engineers work hard every day to keep communities connected, and it was great to be able to share the challenges and realities of delivering this technology.
“I would urge everyone in the local area to keep an eye on the build locally to see when full fibre is available to them. They can visit the Openreach fibre checker, which is regularly updated with our build progress and shows when full fibre is available in specific areas.
”Switching to full fibre is easy and may even be cheaper than your existing broadband package.”
Openreach has invested around £36 million locally so far to build a new ultrafast, ultra-reliable Full Fibre network to more than 120,000 homes and businesses in communities across North Yorkshire including Easingwold, Huby, Malton, Pickering South Milford, Tadcaster and Whitley Bridge
The company has so far publicly announced plans to build in dozens of North Yorkshire communities.
Full Fibre technology is up to 16[2] times faster than the average UK broadband connection and around five times more reliable than the old copper-based network it’s replacing. The Openreach network offers the UK’s biggest choice of Full Fibre broadband providers including the likes of BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone and Zen.
Residents will be able to enjoy a host of online services and entertainment such as seamless streaming, and smooth online gaming experiences. While businesses can operate with certainty that their broadband will support all their day-to-day, business critical tasks such as video calls, banking and customer interaction via social media platforms.
Openreach recently passed more than 12 million premises across the UK, including around 3.5 million in the hardest to serve ‘final third’ of the country.
And while Openreach continues to build at pace more than 4 million homes and businesses have taken up an ultrafast service over the Openreach network – a healthy take up rate of more than 30 per cent.
Ultimately the company plans to build Full Fibre to 25 million homes and businesses nationwide by December 2026.
[1] Investment figure based on an average build cost of £300 per premises
[2] Median averages more accurately reflect the experience of consumers, as average performance is not distorted by a comparatively small number of very fast connections. This approach is in line with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP)’s guidance on broadband speed claims
