BRAINTREE will be one of the first three towns to benefit from the superfast broadband in Essex as a new programme is rolled out.
The first three 'live' fibre broadband cabinets in the county were revealed last week including Rivenhall, in a bid to get better connections to businesses operating in rural areas of the county.
Approximately 300 homes and businesses in these areas are the first to be able to benefit from the programme – just over 100 of which are in Colchester Business Park, over 130 in Rivenhall village, and just under 70 in the Harlow Enterprise Zone.
On Thursday June 12, ECC, BT and BDUK, celebrated the arrival of the first cabinets in the Braintree District, in Rivenhall Village, and the Harlow District, in the Enterprise Zone.
The launch of the Rivenhall cabinet in Church Road, near Rickstones Road, was supported by Braintree District Council, Rivenhall Parish Council, Rivenhall CofE Primary School and members of the community.
The Primary School's choir performed two songs accompanied by guitar, As One and Give it all You've Got, as part of the event.
Priti Patel, MP for Witham, said: "As Chair of the Essex Business Transport and Infrastructure Forum (EBTIF) I have campaigned extensively for better broadband services in my constituency and across Essex.
"I am pleased that this week the first three of the local Superfast Essex fibre-enabled cabinets are going live with one of the launches in Rivenhall. I am looking forward to seeing this superfast broadband introduced in my constituency where it will support the growth of our local economy and bring greater better broadband access to much of our community."
Essex County Council say improving broadband will boost the county's economy and help enable businesses to grow and compete in a global market, support people to get the most out of their education, training and career by enabling better access to online information and services, and support people to work or run a business from home.
Superfast Essex is a £24.6 million programme to deliver the county's biggest ever broadband transformation and the council is spearheading the programme in partnership with BT to make fibre broadband available to more than 87 per cent of premises in the county by the end of summer 2016, with the potential to achieve superfast speeds of 24Mbps and above.
The Superfast Essex programme aims to deliver 2Mbps for all premises in the county in the project area, fast enough to use online services such as BBC iPlayer.
It is estimated engineers from Openreach, BT's local network business, will lay nearly 900,000 metres of optical fibre and install more than 400 new green fibre broadband cabinets at roadsides throughout the county.
The programme builds on BT's commercial plans, which have already made fibre broadband available to more than 500,000 Essex premises.
Residents and businesses can check if they are connected and able to access fibre services from these cabinets by using the Openreach link in the How do I get it? box at the bottom of the 'Where, when and how' page of the Superfast Essex website, www.superfastessex.org.
No-one will be automatically connected and anyone interested in taking up a fibre broadband service will have to ask their existing Internet Service Provider to switch their service to fibre and may have to change packages or provider to get a faster connection.
