Merseyside councils have joined together in a superfast broadband project in a bid to give locals quicker internet connection speeds.
A multimillion pound partnership between Mersey local authorities and BT will lead to 98% of the county having access superfast fibre broadband in the next three years.
A body of five councils led by Liverpool have called the project ‘Merseyside Connected’. It will add to BT’s ongoing commercial development across the region, which aims to provide a high speed network to an additional 43,000 premises in the area.
Jenny Stewart, chief operating officer of Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, said: “Our ambition is to see households and businesses right across Merseyside having access to high-speed connectivity. More and more people and enterprises want fibre broadband to help them go about their online activities even faster and better.”
The announcement will take the total number of sites in the North West with access to superfast broadband to more than 2.4 million.
The ‘Merseyside Connected’ project also plans to focus on getting small businesses connected, and in turn helping to boost the local authority.
A spokesman for BT said: “The benefits are also considerable for businesses, which can do much more in far less time. Firms can speed up file and data transfers, and it means staff can work as effectively from home as they would in the office.”
The three-year project will start with a planning period and by July 2016 it is thought that 634,000 homes and businesses will have access.This is part of a bigger scheme by BT to work with the public sector more and reach other areas, such as Cheshire, Cumbria and Lancashire.