YORK has grand ambitions. With the recession behind us the city is looking to become a top-five player in the UK and a top-ten European mid-size city by the end of next year.

A tall order? Well we are already better placed than many. A record number of businesses started here in the third quarter of 2013, York is ranked 13th in the country for employment, has one of the best research universities and was last year named the number one city in the UK for human resources and quality of life.

Which is all very impressive. However, business will increasingly rely on fast broadband and York has been languishing in the bottom ten, nationally, for superfast connectivity.

That is about to change. Fibre broadband is being rolled out across North Yorkshire and will be available to at least 90 per cent of homes and businesses by the end of 2014.

This is important, because the county’s average ADSL broadband speed is around 6.6Mbps, whereas fibre broadband will be four times as fast, However, York is about to go further still, with the fastest broadband speeds in Britain.

Sky and TalkTalk yesterday joined forces with CityFibre to form a company that promises to deliver amazing speeds of 1000 Mbps to tens of thousands of homes and businesses.

This will be the first time that a UK city has been connected with such high speeds on such a wide basis and is good news for our economy. Suddenly those grand ambitions look more achievable.