Quickline Launch Website for Yorkshire UK Broadband Projects UPDATE

UK ISP Quickline has launched a new website called ‘Connected Yorkshire’, which will act as a central hub for information on their state aid supported Superfast North Yorkshire (SFNY) phase 4 “superfast broadband” rollout project with NYnet and the North Yorkshire County Council (NYCC). It also covers West Yorkshire.

Just to recap. At the end of last year Quickline scooped the £14.5 million Phase 4 rollout contract (here), which will see them extend their “fibre-backed fixed wireless” network to bring “superfast, ultrafast and in some cases gigabit speed broadband” to a further 15,830 premises in North Yorkshire (about 93-94% of premises can currently access ‘superfast’ speeds of 24-30Mbps+ in the county).

In addition to that, Quickline also secured a £9.1m contract in September 2020 to help extend superfast (30Mbps+) and ultrafast (100Mbps+) broadband coverage to a further 6,700 premises – 1,700 businesses and 5,000 homes – across rural West Yorkshire and York (here) by the end of 2022 (i.e. it’s focused on the final 2% of premises without access to superfast speeds), which is also covered by the new website via a separate section.

Sadly, we still have no idea about the rollout plan for all this, and the new Connected Yorkshire website doesn’t add much. The site includes a basic postcode-based coverage checker, but the results it returns are extremely vague and not particularly informative (e.g. if the service is coming it will tell you, but nothing about when or how). Some solid rollout plans, timescales and an easy to navigate coverage map would really help.

UPDATE 22nd Oct 2021

Quickline informs that Myers Lane (Hambleton) is already live with Sockburn, Leyburn, Beckwithshaw and Danby Wiske about to go live within the next month, with more going live each month between now and Summer 2022. The website, we’re told, will also be updated with more information and timescales from next week.