With more and more people using the internet now than ever before, having superfast broadband has become quite an essential mission for councils to tackle to keep their counties in the modern era and their residents happy.
Today, it has been announced that North Yorkshire County Council (NYCC) has been awarded the contract for phase 3 of its Superfast Broadband project with BT. This will mean that over 14,000 additional premises can look forward to better, faster broadband over the next year.
Phases 1 and 2 have already seen over 145,000 premises receive fibre broadband in their area. Phase 2 was completed at the end of December 2017 which means 89% of premises in the North Yorkshire County now have superfast broadband.
Why is it so important for people to have superfast broadband?
Without fibre broadband, most premises are limited to 20Mbps maximum which can cause annoyance to “super users” and business owners who require more than 20Mbps to carry out their tasks.
In 2010, nearly 50,000 businesses and residential properties received less than 2Mbps download speed with the average broadband speed being less than 4Mbps.
2-4 Mbps is enough for casual web surfing and checking your emails, but for multi-users, streaming videos (even in standard definition), downloading files or running multiple applications at once, it isn’t enough.
Why is Yorkshire so far behind with broadband speeds?
Our country as a whole is behind in regards to broadband speeds. Britain is behind European countries including Germany, Spain and Sweden, while Singapore has the best broadband service, ranking us around 31st in the world for broadband speeds.
NYCC state that the reason the broadband speed has been slow for such a long time was due to the size of the county and how sparse it is, which meant it wasn’t beneficial for telecom operators to spend money to install Superfast Broadband in those areas.
The fact that North Yorkshire County Council (NYCC) has been awarded the contract for phase 3 of its Superfast Broadband project with BT is fantastic news for businesses and residents alike.