Member Article

Durham jobs expected as second phase of fibre broadband plan announced

The second phase of a major high-speed fibre broadband plan in Durham has been announced, and is expected to create local jobs.

Digital Durham, a partnership of eight local authorities including Durham County Council, say 12,000 homes and businesses in 14 exchange areas are to be included in the plan, which will see the installation of fibre broadband cabinets and hundreds of kilometres of cable.

Sedgefield and Trimdon will get access to fibre broadband on the BT network for the first time. There will also be a substantial investment in making fibre more widely available in Beamish, Coxhoe, Crook, Meadowfield, New Brancepeth, Peterlee, Stanley, Washington, Burnopfield, Dipton, Lanchester and Wellfield, which already have the high-speed technology. Survey work is well under way with the first households and businesses expected to be able to place orders by late July.

Cllr Jane Brown, Durham County Council’s cabinet member for corporate services, said: “We are extremely pleased with the progress of Digital Durham and it’s great to see the second phase already getting underway.

“This latest work will see thousands more homes and businesses across County Durham and beyond benefitting from high-speed fibre broadband.”

Digital Durham is a £25 million initiative to transform broadband speeds for businesses and residents across County Durham, Gateshead, Sunderland and the Tees Valley.

The majority of premises will be getting access to some of the best broadband speeds boosting the competitiveness of local firms and offering new ways of flexible working, entertainment and learning opportunities for local residents.

Fibre is transforming internet use within the home, from communicating with family and friends to entertainment, shopping and online gaming.

Fibre broadband means everyone in the family can do their own thing online, all at the same time, whether it’s downloading music in minutes or watching catch-up TV; streaming HD or 3D movies in a few minutes; or posting photos and videos to social networking sites in seconds. It will also improve access to new job opportunities, and make it easier to shop around for cheaper services.

The benefits are also considerable for businesses, which can do much more in far less time. Firms can speed up file and data transfers, collaborate with colleagues and customers on conference or video calls or swap their hardware and expensive software licenses for files, processing power and software from cloud computing. Staff can work as effectively from home as they would in the office.

Farooq Hakim, BT’s regional director for the North East, said: “To build a fibre optic broadband network on this scale is a massive undertaking. While, of course, this won’t happen overnight, this announcement shows we are making excellent progress.

“Work on the first phase is already progressing at a rapid pace and Digital Durham expect to exceed their target of reaching 9000 homes and business as part of that phase.

“Homes and businesses in dozens of communities are already getting their first opportunity to find out for themselves why there’s such a buzz about fibre broadband and I would urge people to check with their internet service provider to see what is on offer.”

BT’s investment of £5.9 million bolsters the public sector investment, which includes £7.8 million from Durham County Council & Gateshead, £9.1 million Government funding from Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) and a £1.3 million contribution from public sector partners in Sunderland and the Tees Valley.

In February this year more than £1 million of further funding was secured from the Rural Community Broadband Fund which will be invested to extend fibre broadband coverage in the Durham and Tees Valley areas.

BT says the combination of rural, urban and coastal geographies offers various engineering challenges.

Most of the programme area will receive fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC), where the fibre runs from the telephone exchange as far as the nearest BT street cabinet. It can deliver download speeds of up to 80Mbps and upload speeds of up to 20Mbps.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .