03
December
2019
|
12:00
Europe/Amsterdam

Ultrafast broadband live in Cambuslang not-spot

Openreach has completed work on a new a new ultrafast broadband network for residents of Newton Farm in Cambuslang who missed out on earlier upgrades.

Rutherglen MSP Clare Haughey MSP visited the site yesterday (Monday) to see for herself the difference the new full fibre network will make. Fibre optic cables capable of Gigabit* speeds have been laid from the local telephone exchange directly to residents’ front doors.

Many Newton Park households can already access superfast broadband, but around 200 properties served by one street cabinet had missed out in the past. Local people can check what services are now available on the Openreach fibre checker.

Clare Haughey MSP said: “Some residents in Newton Farm have faced a long wait for better broadband as they missed out on a superfast connection when their properties were built.

“Having campaigned alongside local people for this to be put right, I’m delighted that Openreach have been as good as their word and these households are now jumping ahead when it comes to future-proof connectivity.

“Their new full fibre services will be more reliable and resilient and provide greater capacity to easily meet ever-growing data demands in the future. It was good to hear about how this has been delivered and what Openreach plan for the future.”

Newton Park’s Jason Ritchie, who led the local campaign for residents, said: “The turning point was reaching out to Openreach and getting their buy-in to our unique problem. Once they recognised the situation the ball really started rolling and we had the opportunity to work with engineers to make sure the build met the community’s needs. This has gone on to become a successful project with the community now reaping the benefits.”

Brendan Dick, chair of the Openreach board in Scotland, said: “We know good broadband is really important to local people and it’s great news that the long-running problem with slow speeds for these Newton Farm residents is now resolved. We hope they’ll now enjoy the fastest and most reliable residential broadband currently available in the UK.

“Our team welcomed the chance to show Clare Haughey MSP some of the engineering that goes on behind the scenes and discuss the challenges and benefits of building full fibre technology.”

According to the independent Think Broadband website, which tracks industry progress, 99 per cent of Rutherglen and Hamilton West can connect to superfast broadband at a speed of 30Mbps* and above. Openreach’s existing fibre-to-the-cabinet footprint passes more than 2.6 million homes and businesses in Scotland.

Openreach plans to bring full fibre broadband to four million premises by the end of March 2021 and ultimately the majority of the UK, if the conditions are right to invest.

ENDS

Notes to editors

*These are wholesale speeds available from Openreach to all service providers; speeds offered by service providers may vary. FTTP is capable of delivering the fastest residential broadband speeds in the UK – up to 1Gbps – fast enough to download a two-hour HD movie in 25 seconds or a 45-minute HD TV programme in just five seconds.

About Openreach

Openreach Limited is the UK’s digital network business.  

We’re more than 35,000 people, working in every community to connect homes, schools, shops, banks, hospitals, libraries, mobile phone masts, broadcasters, governments and businesses – large and small – to the world. 

Our mission is to build the best possible network, with the highest quality service, making sure that everyone in the UK can be connected. 

We work on behalf of more than 665 communications providers like BT, SKY, TalkTalk, Vodafone, and Zen, and our broadband network is the biggest in the UK, passing more than 31.8m premises. 

Over the last decade we’ve invested more than £15 billion into our network and, at more than 190 million kilometres – it’s now long enough to wrap around the world 4,798 times. 

Today we’re building an even faster, more reliable and future-proof broadband network which will be the UK’s digital platform for decades to come. We’re making progress towards our full fibre optic network target to reach 25 million premises by December 2026. Research shows a nationwide Full Fibre network could potentially provide a £59bn boost to UK productivity.

To help build the new fibre network and deliver better service across the country – we’ve created and filled more than 9,000 apprenticeship roles in the last two years and we’re recruiting another 1,000 trainee roles in Openreach in 2021. We’re also building greener – we operate the UK’s second largest commercial fleet and want to help lead the transition to electric vehicles, with a target to transition our fleet to being electric in 2030. 

Openreach is a highly regulated, wholly owned, and independently governed unit of the BT Group. More than 90 per cent of our revenues come from services that are regulated by Ofcom and any company can access our products under equivalent prices, terms and conditions. 

For the year ended 31 March 2021, we reported revenue of £5,244m.

For more information, visit www.openreach.co.uk