Roughly 600,000 homes in South Yorkshire look set to benefit after a French defence and engineering group, Thales, was selected to build a new fibre broadband network in the area. The development, which was approved by a consortium including Alcatel-Lucent, Sheffield City Council, Kingston Communications and others, could provide speeds of up to 50Mbps to the area.

It's understood that the network will seek to replace existing copper line based infrastructure with modern fibre, allowing for faster connection speeds. The network will then be sold on, wholesale, to ISP's for supply to residents and businesses.

Naturally the projects progress will be watched intensively by an uncertain industry, which has yet to plot the UK's wider next-generation broadband future.