A BROADBAND company has outlined plans to make ultrafast, ultra-reliable and future-proof broadband available in seven market towns across North Yorkshire.

The company Openreach has launched a new scheme to bring broadband to ‘harder to reach’ areas across the UK, with Tadcaster being one of its ambitions to extend its new ‘full’ fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network too.

Robert Thorburn, Openreach’s Partnership Director in the North of England, said: “This is great news for people living and working here and builds on Openreach’s strong track record of working in rural areas, for years playing a key role alongside local councils to upgrade more than 96 per cent of Yorkshire to superfast broadband. Today’s announcement is about taking that next step and building a full-fibre network that is not only faster but also more reliable and future-proof for generations to come.”

In a report by the Centre for Economics & Business Research (Cebr) – “Full fibre broadband: A platform for growth” - commissioned by Openreach in 2019, it revealed that connecting everyone in Yorkshire and the Humber to ‘full-fibre’ broadband by 2025 would create a £3.8 billion boost to the region’s economy.

Openreach’s CEO, Clive Selley, said: “Our full-fibre build programme is going great guns - having passed over 2 million premises already on the way to our 4m target by March 2021. We’re now building at around 26,000 premises a week in over 100 locations – reaching a new home or business every 23 seconds. That’s up from 13,000 premises a week this time last year."