Shannon Welcomes Moves To Upgrade Broadband Services

Openreach delivering Full Fibre Broadband to 94 Rural towns and villages.

Jim Shannon MP has welcomed the progress in moves to establish full fibre broadband across the area. As more businesses opt to have employees working from home due to the Covid-19 epidemic, and the needs of small and medium businesses, demands on broadband will increase dramatically.

Mr Shannon said: “I have long been working at Westminster and locally here in the Strangford constituency to highlight the need for full fibre broadband to rural locations.

“I was made aware that there would be some news coming and I am delighted to hear that  94 rural towns and villages will see Openreach building new future-proof Full Fibre broadband.

“This will givehomes and businesses access to broadband at speeds of up to 1 Gbps.  It means that a file that would take seven minutes to download with superfast broadband, can download in 42 seconds. 

“Now although this does not mean much to me, it does mean a lot to the large number of people with business in rural Strangford and indeed to the large number of people who are working from home at present.

“The COVID-19 crisis has driven a 25% increase in bandwidth demand from those working and schooling from home during lockdown.

“There is a recruitment of 100 apprentice engineers over the coming months to support the Full Fibre build programme as it rolls out across the region in one of the largest infrastructure projects in Northern Ireland.

Full Fibre build programme now includes in the Strangford area, Ballywalter, Greyabbey, Killyleagh, Millisle, Portaferry and Portavogie and I am pushing to see this in Carrowdore, Kircubbin and other areas.

“I am delighted that we are seeing infrastructure and investment in our rural locations and welcome this news which will be so helpful to small rural businesses and homes alike,” said Mr Shannon.

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