Openreach’s (BT) big green FTTC superfast broadband Street Cabinets can be a bit dull and so an artist from Doncaster in South Yorkshire (England), Nick Boruk, has decided to help promote the new service by covering a few of them with a big Teddy Bear face (painted canvas cover). Ok then.
Nick appears to be basing the approach on his “We Are BLOK HEDS” characters, which were all originally inspire by British Youth Culture. Personally we’re not massive fans of having a giant Teddy Bear staring at us, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder and if we’re writing about it then perhaps the publicity drive has achieved something.
Speaking of publicity, this is all an attempt by the local £22.4m Superfast South Yorkshire project to better promote their on-going roll-out of related FTTC/P broadband services with BT (SFSY’s mascot is apparently a Teddy Bear, naturally), which aims to cover 97.9% of South Yorkshire by the end of 2017.
Apparently members of the public are also being asked to come up with a “suitable name for their super furry figurehead” and they can Tweet suggestions to @superfastSY (using the #SuperFiBear hash tag) by 30th June 2016. No doubt we can rely on people to only propose entirely sensible suggestions, as always happens when the Internet gets involved.
Can you guess where I am ? #SuperFiBear #barnsleyisbrill #doncasterisgreat #rotherhamiswonderful #sheffieldissuper pic.twitter.com/EbkqCll3jF
— Superfast SouthYorks (@superfastSY) June 3, 2016
The good news is that the painted canvas covers won’t torment local residents forever, the bad news is that the design can simply be removed and used on another fibre cabinet when the roll-out moves on to the next community; assuming it hasn’t had swear words and pictures of male genitalia painted on it before then.
But perhaps of more interest to our readers is the confirmation that SFSY’s roll-out will also bring 330Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premise (FTTP) lines to a number of local business parks including Denaby Main, Capitol Park, Chase Park and Robin Hood Airport.
Bill Mordue, Local Councillor, said:
“It’s great to be involved with this competition launch which also marks the start of the start of a flurry of fibre broadband upgrades in Doncaster. In the next few months 3,000 homes and businesses will be upgraded thanks to Superfast South Yorkshire, in areas such as Adwick, Armthorpe, Askern and Balby.
It’s also fantastic news that many business parks including Denaby Main, Capitol Park, Chase Park and Robin Hood Airport are also set to be upgraded to ultrafast broadband providing much needed speeds of up to 300Mbps. Superfast Broadband means that more people across Doncaster can now access fast reliable internet.”
Mind you it’s not the first time that Openreach has tried to change the look of their Street Cabinets (example), although most of the time their aim has been to make them less noticeable.. with the odd random exception (here).
We should add that a further £4.8 million in additional funding has recently been secured, which should extend the reach of “fibre broadband” to 99% of South Yorkshire. Further details on this will be revealed in the near future.
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