Business

Belfast’s digital sector to receive broadband boost

Mairead Meyer, managing director of the newly-named Openreach Northern Ireland team
Mairead Meyer, managing director of the newly-named Openreach Northern Ireland team Mairead Meyer, managing director of the newly-named Openreach Northern Ireland team

BELFAST has been confirmed as the first city in the north to benefit from new fibre broadband infrastructure.

The city is the first to receive Openreach’s fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) roll-out programme ‘Fibre First’, where fibre optic cables are laid from the exchange directly to people’s front doors.

The news will provide a boost for Belfast's already thriving digital sector, which generated £875 million in turnover last year.

Those working from home will also benefit as the technology is made available to tens of thousands of homes and businesses in the area, providing more reliable and resilient connections.

The Crumlin, Falls, Shankill, Shore Road, Malone Road, Ormeau Road, Lisburn Road and the Upper Newtownards Road areas will be the first of the city to be connected.

The fibre connections will provide speeds of up to 1Gbps, about 24 times faster than the current UK average of 44Mbps, helping to ensure that Belfast can lead the way in digital innovation for decades to come.

Mairead Meyer, managing director of the newly-named Openreach Northern Ireland team said:

“We are delighted to support Belfast’s digital ambitions. The city is already a key player in the global digital economy, and we are getting on with building the digital infrastructure it needs to stay ahead."

"We are on track to reach our target of connecting 25 per cent of homes and businesses in Northern Ireland to ultra-fast broadband by the end of 2019 — and we have the ambition, capability and experience to go well beyond," she added.

Belfast joins a dozen other locations across the UK that make up the first phase of Openreach’s multi-million pound fibre investment, which will initially connect up three million homes and businesses by the end of 2020. The ambition is to build FTTP to around 10 million premises by the mid-2020s and ultimately to the majority of the UK under the right conditions.