Thousands more properties to receive superfast broadband

Faster, more reliable broadband services are heading to Bradford, after the city was named among 29 new locations to benefit from Openreach’s nationwide investment programme.

Work to build new future-proof Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology, where fibre is laid all the way from the exchange to people’s front doors, is set to get underway by the end of next year, once engineers have carried out detailed planning and survey work.

Full fibre or ultrafast broadband provides more reliable, resilient and future-proof connectivity; fewer faults; more predictable, consistent speeds and the ability to upgrade easily to meet the demands of future technology.

The upgrades will complement ongoing broadband upgrades by the Superfast West Yorkshire and York programme, a partnership between the five West Yorkshire local authorities, York City Council, the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, UK Government and Openreach.

Kim Mears, Openreach’s Managing Director for Strategic Infrastructure Development, said: “We’re looking forward to bringing future proof broadband infrastructure to thousands of homes and businesses across Bradford.

“Our engineers are about to begin a detailed survey of the city and we plan to start building the network in around a year’s time.

“Our intention is to build quickly, efficiently and with minimal disruption to people living and working in Bradford.”

The new network in Bradford will benefit both residents and businesses. The technology gives users the ability to use and manage multiple bandwidth hungry devices at the same; from TV’s to fridges to central heating, lighting and security cameras, helping people to run their homes more efficiently.

Businesses can also benefit from cloud-based services, making efficiency improvements and cost savings through improved online sales and marketing and better online ordering and invoicing systems.

Openreach said its commitment to Yorkshire and the Humber extends beyond making better broadband available. Around 2,300 Openreach staff live and work in the region, and since the end of last year the company has recruited more than 175 new fibre apprentice engineers.

In March 2018 Openreach opened a £1m training centre in Bradford to educate the next generation of digital engineers bringing vital broadband services to communities across Yorkshire and beyond.

More than 5,000 engineers and new recruits were trained in the first year with that number expected to grow.

Since the launch of Openreach’s multi-billion pound ‘Fibre First’ programme in February last year, its engineers have deployed around 2.6m kilometres of fibre.

Overall, 103 locations across the UK are now part of the ‘Fibre First’ build programme, including Leeds, Sheffield, Doncaster and Bradford. As a result, more than 1.8m homes and businesses have access to faster, more reliable and future-proof, full fibre broadband services over the Openreach network.

Openreach will publish the information on its website here detailing its Fibre First build plans for the next 18 months. The website also includes details of the specific exchanges where FTTP is currently being built, has already been built, or where building will start within the next three months.