Wrexham’s Fibre Broadband ‘Goes Live’

The eagerly anticipated ‘fibre’ broadband has apparently gone live around town today, despite all providers we checked with showing a ‘due date’ at the end of the month. We were first to report the planned roll out last year, and have followed the deployment as its reached around town.

The official BT checking system, plus their client facing services still have a due date of 31st December for the Wrexham exchange, however press releases have been circulated welcoming the switching on.

Areas in the north of the town and Gresford are among the latest places to benefit from BT’s £2.5 billion rollout of fibre broadband, with the technology now ‘available’ to residents.

Ann Beynon, BT director for Wales, said “BT’s fibre network is expanding rapidly across Wales bringing a boost for local economies wherever it goes. Research suggests that within 15 years fibre broadband could bolster the economy of a typical town by £143 million and create 225 new jobs, 140 new start-up businesses and 1,000 more homeworkers”

“The arrival of fibre in Gresford along with the Wrexham and Wrexham North exchange areas, can really help local firms in these economically challenging times, opening up new ways of working and speeding up vital operations, such as file and data transfers, conferencing and computer back-up, all of which may also help cut costs.”

Lesley Griffiths AM has hailed the news that a major investment providing 15000 homes and businesses in the Wrexham area with superfast broadband will ‘go live’ saying “BT’s investment has resulted in a significant improvement in the communications infrastructure of Wrexham North and Gresford”.

“The speed of internet connection is becoming increasingly important in everyone’s daily life. This new fast access will give our local businesses a competitive edge in today’s crowded marketplace”.

“It marks a significant milestone in the development of next generation communications in Wrexham”.

Ian Lucas, MP for Wrexham, said “I welcome the news that BT has invested in bringing super-fast broadband to Wrexham. Fast broadband is an essential tool for local businesses and will be a catalyst for the creation of new jobs by making the town an even more attractive place for businesses to start-up and invest.”

“It will also transform the lives of local families, whether they’re using the technology for social networking, entertainment or education. I now want more investment to benefit more Wrexham families and businesses”

The new broadband will be eight times faster than the UK average and allow families and businesses to do much more online, all at the same time. The open network means that all internet service providers will benefit from BT’s commercial investment.

The development in Wrexham is part of a national scheme undertaken by BT. The work has taken the number of homes and businesses in Wales with access to the network to 300,000. BT’s aim is to
make superfast fibre broadband available to two thirds of UK by the end of 2015, creating speeds of between 40 and 100 Mbps (megabits per second). The current average broadband speed in the UK is
6.8 Mbps if you are lucky !

(Pictured – a BT Engineer doing the upgrade work , a sight that has been common around the town recently!)