Streaming set to speed up for lots of Oldhamers

Downloading a film and sharing or streaming content could become faster and more reliable for around 60,000 homes and businesses across Greater Manchester.

People living there are set to benefit from access to some of the fastest broadband speeds available (up to 330 Mbps), providing enough bandwidth for a family of four to all stream ultra HD or 4k quality movies or TV simultaneously.

It’s after Openreach, the UK’s largest telephone and broadband network, announced the next 81 locations – including Oldham, Daubhill, Hyde, Moss Side, Stalybridge and Urmston - to be upgraded under their ultrafast broadband investment.

As well as adding even more reliability and resilience to the network - meaning the connection is less likely to drop out - ultrafast broadband brings faster speeds and greater capacity for multiple devices and applications like on-demand video, Virtual Reality gaming and smart home technology.

Openreach’s Director for Fibre Delivery in the North, Matthew Hemmings, said: “We are delighted to be upgrading our network and extending our ultrafast broadband reach to dozens of new locations across the UK, benefitting hundreds of thousands more homes and businesses.

"The amount people are doing online, often at the same time, is growing every year and the pace shows no sign of slowing.

"We understand people need to have a fast and reliable connection at home and at work, and our ultrafast broadband network is at the forefront of making that happen."

As well as making everything happen more quickly, ultrafast broadband also provides greater capacity.

This means you can reliably stream music or watch TV, at the same time as other members of your family are using the connection for things like online gaming or social media.

The technology also has huge benefits for small businesses and people working from home, who can do things like video conferencing, with the confidence that their internet connection won’t slow or drop out.

This latest work in Greater Manchester uses a technology called Gfast, which builds on existing infrastructure, changing the way broadband signals are transmitted to make them ultrafast without the need to dig up roads and install new cabling all the way to the property.

The rollout will see Openreach engineers building on the existing high speed broadband network across the North West, where more than 96 per cent of homes and businesses already have access to superfast (speeds of 24Mbps and above) broadband.

Across the region, more than 3,400 people are employed by Openreach, most of them engineers.

And that team is expanding, after it was announced earlier this year that more than 280 new engineers are being recruited throughout the North West to help with the ultrafast broadband rollout.

Openreach provides the telephone and broadband network used by the likes of BT, Sky and Talktalk.

This means residents and businesses will still be able to choose from a wide range of broadband deals – they are not restricted to just one supplier.

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