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Stephen Mosley MP - Boost for Thousands More Homes and Businesses as Super-Fast, Fibre-Based Broadband Goes Live in the Centre of Chester |
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Boost for Thousands More Homes and Businesses as Super-Fast, Fibre-Based Broadband Goes Live in the Centre of Chester
Super-fast, fibre-based broadband is now available to thousands more homes and businesses in Cheshire, BT have announced.
More than 16,000 homes and businesses in the centre of Chester are poised to join the high-speed revolution as engineers complete the local upgrades over the next few weeks.
People living and working in the centre of Chester are among the first in the UK to benefit from BT’s roll-out of fibre-based broadband.
They follow south Chester which was enabled earlier this year, while homes and businesses in the north of Chester are set to benefit later this year.
BT has announced plans to invest up to £2.5 billion in the technology, which could become available to around two-thirds of UK premises by 2014 if investment conditions are favourable.
Fibre to street cabinets offers download speeds of up to 40Mb/s, and upload capability of up to 10Mb/s. Openreach is planning to roughly double these speeds next year. Even faster speeds are possible if the fibre goes direct to the home or premises. The super-fast speeds will power new business applications and more sophisticated home and entertainment services.
This important development for the city centre comes just weeks after Openreach announced parts of South Chester will be among only six UK locations to have access to the fastest super-fast broadband speeds in the country.
This followed the launch of its Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) service, initially offering speeds of up to 110 Megabits per second (Mbps) and then 300 Mbps by the Spring of next year. Some homes and businesses in Lache, Heronbridge, Handbridge and Saltney are among the communities to benefit.
Chester MP Stephen Mosley said: “The arrival of super-fast broadband is a very important development for our communities and it represents a significant investment in the area. I welcome the opportunity for local householders and businesses to be at the forefront of benefiting from this exciting technology.”
Mike Blackburn, BT’s regional director for the North West, said: “This is an exciting development in the region’s fast-moving broadband story. Households and businesses switching to super-fast broadband will soon be experiencing the internet as they have never experienced it before.
“The advent of BT fibre-based broadband in the centre of Chester will support local jobs and the local economy and is a vital part of BT’s broadband plans for the region. As our roll-out of super-fast, fibre-based broadband gathers pace, many more customers in other parts of the country can look forward to faster speeds in the pipeline.
Super-fast speeds allow users to run multiple bandwidth-hungry applications at the same time. For example, some members of a family could be watching different high definition (HD) movies or 3D TV, while others play online games or work on complex graphics or video projects.
For businesses, the new network will underpin the introduction of many new services and applications. Computer processing and storage of files will become more sophisticated and secure using ‘cloud computing’ technology. There will be faster back-up of computer systems and wider use of high quality videoconferencing within firms and between them and their customers.
Further roll-out plans are due to be announced later this year. Householders and businesses can contact their broadband service provider to place an order or register their interest.
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