Mayor and Connecting Cambridgeshire welcome Openreach investment and news that 17 areas will benefit from full fibre

Mayor and Connecting Cambridgeshire welcome Openreach investment and news that 17 areas will benefit from full fibre

Over 100,000 more homes and businesses across Cambridgeshire are set to benefit from a major broadband boost thanks to a £30m1 investment by Openreach – the UK’s largest digital network provider, used by the likes of BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone and Zen.  

When this new engineering work is finished, most people living and working in Cambridge, Peterborough and 15 other locations (full list below) could potentially upgrade to full fibre broadband.  

This is a further boost for the East of England where more than 600,000 homes and businesses – including Ely – can already access full fibre on the Openreach network with tens of thousands more announced in future plans. 

It builds on previous work between Openreach and. the Connecting Cambridgeshire programme – hosted by Cambridgeshire County Council and led by Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority. 

 Combined Authority’s Connecting Cambridgeshire broadband programme, delivered by Cambridgeshire County Council. 

Full fibre broadband is up to ten times faster than the average home broadband connection and around five times more reliable than the traditional copper-based network, providing more predictable, consistent speeds.   

Mayor of Cambridgeshire & Peterborough, Dr Nik Johnson, said:  

“We very much welcome this announcement which will bring better connectivity to many more homes and businesses across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. This supports our aims and builds on the work of our Connecting Cambridgeshire programme to extend and expand digital connectivity across the county, which is essential for so many aspects of 21st century living and underpins the local economy.”  

Recent research by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) highlighted the clear economic benefits of connecting everyone in the East of England to full fibre. It estimated this would create a £5.4 billion boost to the local economy. 

Kasam Hussain, Openreach’s regional director for Cambridgeshire, said: “Nobody in the UK is building full fibre faster, further or at a higher quality than Openreach. We’re passing more than 50,000 new homes and businesses every week and installing around 800 metres of cable every minute, with our teams of highly-skilled engineers working alongside our build partners to deliver some of the fastest and most reliable broadband available anywhere in the world.  

“We’ve already reached more than 7 million homes and businesses across the UK with ultrafast full fibre technology including more than 45,000 in Cambridgeshire but we know there’s more to do and we’re committed to doing it.” 

The locations being announced across Cambridgeshire are: 

• Cambridge
• Cherry Hinton
• Cottenham
• Doddington
• Eye
• Fulbourn
• Girton
• Histon
• March
• Mereside (Ramsey)
• Peterborough
• Teversham
• Waterbeach
• Werrington
• Whittlesey
• Willingham