The state aid supported Superfast West Yorkshire and York (SFWYY) programme, which is working alongside Openreach (BT) to extend the availability of “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) services, has announced that some homes in the rural town of Todmorden have now gained access to their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network.
At present around 97-98% of premises across West Yorkshire and York can already gain access to a 30Mbps+ network (mostly via slower FTTC), although Phase 2 of the long-running SFWYY project will continue to supply until summer 2021 and the most recent work involves gigabit-capable FTTP connectivity.
To date, the overall programme (Phase 1 and 2) has helped to reach an additional 100,000 premises (inc. 5,000 businesses), which might have otherwise been ignored or left to wait for years long. Under Phase 2 alone a total of 41,619 homes and businesses are planned to get access to superfast speeds by summer 2021 and the rural town of Todmorden has just become the latest to benefit from this.
At present around 8,000 premises in the town can already gain access to speeds of 30Mbps, but as a result of the latest work Openreach have also been able to extend 1Gbps FTTP into the area. One caveat here is that at present only 250 premises can access this. However, the operator states that “hundreds more properties across Calderdale are set to benefit from this next generation network over the coming weeks and months” (includes some of their commercial builds).
Tim Swift, Deputy Chair of West Yorkshire CA and Leader of Calderdale Council, said:
“We are delighted to be able to support this project in partnership with Openreach, meaning that thousands of homes and businesses in Todmorden will be able to enjoy faster, fibre broadband. At a time when more of us are at home than ever before, a fast and reliable broadband service is vitally important and depended on by many of our West Yorkshire communities.
Enabling our residents and businesses to have access to faster broadband is key to levelling-up the region, and by supporting schemes such as the broadband programme, we will continue to build a stronger and growing economy.”
Robert Thorburn, Openreach’s Regional Director in the North, said:
“This past year has demonstrated in a way none of us could ever have predicted just how important fast, reliable broadband is to us all.
Recent data from our network shows that broadband usage more than doubled in 2020 driven of course by the increase in people staying at home and home working due to the Coronavirus pandemic. But increasingly recreational pursuits such as watching live sport and boxsets as well as updates to popular gaming titles are also driving up usage.
While nearly 97% of premises in Calderdale can already access superfast broadband, we know there is more to do to reach those final communities who need better connectivity.”
Funding for Phase 2 includes £6.89m from the Building Digital UK (BDUK) Superfast Extension Plan and £3.49m from BT. A further £6.89m was also secured from the England European Regional Development Fund (EERDF) as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020. Finally, some additional funding came from the local authorities (total investment in phase 2 of £19.5m).
We should point out that last year also saw Quickline, which is part of Bigblu group, secure a new £9.11m state aid supported contract to deploy “superfast” (30Mbps+) and “ultrafast” (100Mbps+) capable fixed wireless and FTTP based broadband services to 6,700 extra premises across rural West Yorkshire and York (here) – due to complete by the end of 2022.
Would hardly call Todmorden rural…
I wouldn’t call 30+Mbps ‘superfast’ by any means.
Hence, the speech marks 😉
My town don’t even have 1 gig speeds yet and we can only get 330 and 50 up bt Need to get there act together we had fttp since 2016 and still got the old fttp lines
I wouldn’t cry too much about 330/50 I think most observers are more interested in companies fixing the people who can’t get any decent connection. 330/50 is perfectly adequate for home working unless you are a full time video editor.
The reality is that at some point OR will upgrade the head ends and GPONs for all the 330/50 areas but the longer they leave it the more likely it is that it would leapfrog GPON and go straight to XGSGPON as they won’t want the physical upgrade cost twice.
I wouldn’t complain about 330/50… We are lucky to get over 50 we we are! I’d love faster speeds but the rate the UK implements these thing it’ll be 2100 before we get anything like that!
I will do you one better Bob, try dealing with 14/1 all the time 🙂
Well by don’t care about getting full fiber out to everyone and it sucks thay own the the whole copper network but harf ass everything
Thank you for your thoughtful, informative and erudite contribution.
Anything faster than 16mbit/s download, 2 mbit/s upload, will be welcome. Try working from home on that! Not easy.
I live in Todmorden and can get nothing more than 4 up/0.5 down Mbps. Two of us work from home with regular videoconferences on this. Council and Openreach keep telling us we won’t be getting an upgrade in the next few years but to “keep checking”!
I live in Tod and they run most of the network on old aluminium cable which won’t support anything more than 35mbps if your lucky. Openreach have put the boards in to supoort upto 85mbps but, that is no good if the cabling can’t support that level of data from the exchange to property. Openreach also specify that my property should recieve upto 85mbps this clearly not the case as they are misleading providers and ultimately customers.
I’m on Halifax road in Todmorden and I can’t even get FTTC, despite the fact that I can see the cabinets from the front door!
Is the whole of Todmorden the 2 percent of West Yorkshire that isn’t covered? Ridiculous…