Twenty eight thousand Corby homes to be upgraded to supercharged broadband network

People living in Corby and surrounding villages are to be connected to a new broadband network being fitted across the town.

The Corby and Great Oakley exchanges are being upgraded to Openreach' s new ultrafast, ultra-reliable, 'full fibre' broadband network being built in the area.

The work is part of a £31m broadband boost for some areas of the East Midlands including 28,000 homes served by the Corby and Great Oakley exchanges.

Openreach is the UK’s largest digital network provider and is used by more than 660 service providers including the likes of BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone and Zen.

Kasam Hussain, Openreach’s regional director for the Midlands, said: “Good connectivity is vital – whether it’s to work from home, access education and care services, or for gaming and streaming entertainment – and that’s why we’re investing across the UK to upgrade our network to 25 million premises.

“Nobody’s building faster, further or to a higher standard than Openreach, and we’ve already reached six million homes and businesses with ultrafast full fibre technology, including around 300,000 across the East Midlands. It’s proving popular as well, with tens of thousands already choosing to start using it.

“Our engineers and build partners are reaching more communities every week and we’re not just building in cities and urban areas. Many rural and hard to reach communities are already benefitting and we plan to reach many more in the coming months and years.”

Across the UK, 1.3 million homes and businesses have already ordered a full fibre service from a range of retail service providers using the Openreach network. But this means 4.7 million more are yet to start benefiting from some of the fastest, most reliable broadband connections in the world and have yet to upgrade.

Recent research by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) highlighted the clear economic benefits of connecting everyone in the East Midlands to full fibre. It estimated this would create a £3.5 billion boost to the local economy.

Openreach engineers have been working hard to make the technology available to as many people as possible throughout the UK and work will continue between now and 2026, with the full list of locations and timescales being updated regularly on the Openreach website.

The company’s plans are fundamental to the UK Government achieving its target of delivering ‘gigabit capable’ broadband to 85 per cent of UK by 2025. The company plans to reach a total of 25 million premises by the end of December 2026, including more than six million in the hardest-to-serve parts of the country defined by industry regulator Ofcom.