Nearly 8,000 homes in the hardest-to-reach rural areas of the North East will have access to the fastest broadband speeds by the end of 2025 as part of a multi-million pound plan to tackle the region's digital divide.
Bosses say the rollout of gigabit-capable broadband - able to reach speeds up to 1,000 megabits a second - to 4,000 homes in Teesdale in County Durham and 3,750 in north Northumberland will make a "huge difference" to families and businesses.
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Gigabit broadband is available to three-quarters of homes and businesses nationwide but it's feared the lack of high-speed connections is holding back the mostly rural areas yet to get the vital fibre cable installed.
On The Northern Agenda podcast Simon Blagden, chair of the Building Digital UK agency responsible for rolling out gigabit broadband to hard-to-reach areas, said he expected coverage to be at 85% by 2025.
Listen to the full interview with Simon Blagden here on The Northern Agenda podcast
Two of its biggest recent contracts were in Teesdale and Northumberland. And today (April 17) at the Connected North conference in Manchester a senior official said he expected a contract to be announced for the rest of the North East very soon.
BDUK told The Northern Agenda newsletter that contractor GoFibre has begun building in Teesdale. In North Northumberland "they have completed detailed network survey and design ahead of schedule, and begun some preparatory works, with rollout expected to commence in May/June".
In both cases the projects will be complete by the end of 2025 though homes and business premises will be made ready to actually get a gigabit connection on a rolling basis.
In Teesdale the project will cover towns, villages and hamlets across the region including Barnard Castle and Bishop Auckland while in Northumberland the work will take place around Berwick-upon-Tweed and Wooler.
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In both cases BDUK has stepped in with public money to connect these areas as private operators don't consider it commercially viable to install the infrastructure.
Mr Blagden says access to gigabit makes a "huge, huge difference" for rural communities and transforms the prospects of businesses able to do more trade online or benefit from hi-tech advances in farming.
"And also if you have a look at one of [Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's] big aims, one of his five aims is economic growth," he says. "Now we have a situation where these former rural communities that are now better connected with gigabit have the opportunity to really take part in full economic growth.
"New businesses are moving into the area that before were put off by the fact that they were remote in terms of Gigabit connectivity and the chance for people to create new jobs and skills in those areas."
Back in 2019 Boris Johnson promised every property in the country would have the fastest broadband by 2025.
This unachievable target was scaled back to 85% a few months later but hitting this figure as part of the £5bn Project Gigabit gets harder as it goes along, with many of the remaining areas proving hard to reach.
And persuading people to take up the offer of gigabit broadband once it's available to them is considered one of the biggest challenges facing the industry.
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