Horsham set for ultrafast broadband

On Friday CityFibre, a national fibre network provider, revealed Horsham is one of 36 more towns and cities which will benefit from delivery of full fibre connectivity services as part of its £4bn Gigabit City Investment Programme.

Bognor Regis, Chichester, Crawley and Littlehampton are also set to benefit in West Sussex.

This builds on a previous announcement that included Adur and Worthing where the roll out of services is already under way, according to tech firm CloudConnX.

A spokesman said: “CityFibre have committed to an accelerated build programme with £1.5bn in network construction contracts to be awarded by July 2020.

“It is estimated that the roll out programme will unlock some 5,000 construction jobs and £85 billion in local economic growth.

“Availability of full fibre is an exciting development for the county.

“Businesses will benefit from cost effective reliable connectivity offering speeds from 100Mbit/s to 10Gbit/s and increased productivity from ultrafast access to cloud services.”

The presence of full fibre is essential for delivery of 5G, he added.

The spokesman said it will accelerate the roll out of leading edge services including mobile, autonomous vehicles and Internet of Things.

He added: “Homes will also benefit from ultrafast broadband packages offering speeds up to 1Gbit/s, available at competitive prices from a range of providers.”

In February Reading-based internet service provider Hey!Broadband said it had launched a full fibre broadband service - providing broadband connection speeds of up to one gigabit - to 5,000 premises in select areas near central Horsham.