#superfastelves deliver extra Christmas present to Leicestershire village

Fibre broadband now benefitting those living in Shearsby

Around 650 homes and businesses in and around villages including Bruntingthorpe, Peatling Magna, Willoughby Waterleys and Shearsby can start looking forward to the benefits of fibre broadband, it was announced today.

With the amount of technology in our homes increasing rapidly, the faster download speeds now available will make it easier than ever before for villagers to go online to watch the latest TV and films, play computer games or download or stream music.

It’s all thanks to the Superfast Leicestershire partnership between Leicestershire County Council and BT that has already made fibre broadband available to more than 57,000 properties across the county.

A huge amount of work to make fibre broadband available has taken place in recent months in the Peatling Magna telephone exchange area, with the final roadside fibre broadband cabinet on Welford Road in Shearsby being connected this week.

The arrival of fibre broadband in Shearsby was a surprise late inclusion in a social media campaign that has been running throughout December, which has seen #superfastelves announce a new town or village to ‘go live’ with fibre broadband every few days.

Tom Purnell, Assistant Chief Executive of Leicestershire County Council, said: “The partnership between the county council and BT has delivered an early Christmas present for local people and businesses. More and more areas are now benefiting from the project and this is fantastic news for Leicestershire’s continuing economic prosperity into 2016 and beyond.”

Superfast Leicestershire remains on course to bring high-speed fibre technology to more than 72,000 premises in Leicestershire by the end of 2017.

The roadside fibre broadband cabinet on Welford Road in Shearsby is one of 264 installed across Leicestershire since the broadband programme got underway. They are connected to the network by more than 390 kilometres of underground cable.

Kasam Hussain, BT’s project manager for Superfast Leicestershire, said: “This is a fantastic early Christmas present for everyone in the local area. We know that fibre broadband provides a huge boost to villages like Shearsby that historically struggled with slow broadband speeds. They can now look forward to 2016 knowing it’ll be easier than ever to work from home and using the internet for everyday life.”

Fibre broadband, which is now available in many parts of Leicestershire, helps make everything happen online much faster than a standard broadband connection. The technology offers download speeds up to 80Mbps.

At 50Mbps, a music album will take roughly 16 seconds to download, compared to more than three minutes on a 4Mbps connection. A high-quality film will take around four minutes to download on a 50Mbps fibre connection, compared to 50 minutes on a standard 4Mbps connection.

All of the work is being carried out by Openreach, BT’s local network business, meaning people with access to the fibre network can choose from a range of internet providers and so can benefit from competitive pricing.

The internet is transforming the way people live and work; enabling businesses to work more effectively and bringing online entertainment to life. With fibre broadband everyone can be online at the same time without the web grinding to a halt. You can experience improved upload and download speeds, improved file sharing and faster access to complex cloud based systems.

Funding for the Superfast Leicestershire partnership has been provided by a wide-range of organisations including the county council, BT, Broadband Delivery UK (the Government’s broadband delivery arm), the European Union, and Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership as part of its Local Growth Fund.

For more information about Superfast Leicestershire visit www.superfastleicestershire.org.uk or look out for #SuperfastLeics on Twitter.