Ultra-Fast Broadband Plans For Salisbury

Plans to make Salisbury the first city in the UK to benefit from ultra-fast broadband have been unveiled. This is Money revealed that Openreach is starting work on the scheme to connect every home and business in the city to the ultra-fast network.

According to the news provider, the aim is for the 22,000 premises in the city in Wiltshire to be fully connected to an ultra-fast network one year after work on the project begins.

It’s estimated that it will cost £300-£400 to connect each premises, with Openreach investing around £8 million to connect Salisbury. By the end of 2020, the company wants to see three million premises in the UK served by ultra-fast broadband, at a total estimated cost of £1.2 billion.

Clive Selley, chief executive of Openreach, told the newspaper that this is an important development in the country’s digital infrastructure.

“This will underpin a very significant improvement in UK productivity. It will allow people to create new data-intensive businesses and it will enable people to work from home,” he stated.

The news provider also noted that Openreach has said it would like to see 10 million properties connected to ultra-fast broadband in the UK by 2025, but has so far not made any firm commitment on numbers.

Organisations that are planning to update their business phone systems may want to take the arrival of ultra-fast broadband into account. This kind of internet service will only make voip phones more attractive.

However, all of this comes at a time when not all UK properties have access to super-fast broadband, let alone the ultra-fast variety. The government recently estimated that coverage of super-fast broadband should reach 97 per cent of the country by March 2020.