PARTS of North Swindon have finally entered the 21st century, say residents after the successful roll-out of superfast broadband.

Following a campaign from locals who have been without access to superfast broadband for several years, BT Openreach is now in the final stages of installing the service in thousands of homes in North Swindon.

Damon Bower, of Haydon Wick Parish Council, praised the resilience of residents who, due to their own efforts, can now enjoy the benefits of superfast broadband.

Coun Bower said: “This has been much needed in North Swindon for years and it’s fantastic that parts of the town have been brought into the 21st century.

“Let’s celebrate our community and how it came together with getting the fibre broadband delivered – it was a true team effort.”

BT Openreach has been upgrading the Haydon Wick and Blunsdon exchanges, along with a number of street cabinets, in order to enable them to deliver fibre broadband to more homes in North Swindon.

Some residents have previously had broadband speeds as low as 2mb, which makes it impossible to work from home or live stream videos.

A spokesman for Openreach said: “More than 5,900 homes and businesses in Haydon Wick can now place an order for superfast broadband as a result of fibre roll-out in the area.

“To make this possible our engineers have been working hard to fibre-enable 11 roadside cabinets that serve Haydon Wick and we will shortly be completing work to upgrade the 12th cabinet by the end of this month which will make superfast broadband available to a further 700 properties.

“For a number of other homes and businesses we’re also deploying fibre to the premise technology which will provide access to some of the fastest broadband speeds in the UK.

“We’ve currently made this technology available to more than 1,000 properties in Haydon Wick using this method.”

However, it is thought that there may still be some who, due to their location, may still miss out on the upgrade.  

Swindon Borough Council welcomed the announcement by BT.

A council spokesman said: “When we ran our procurement process to bring superfast broadband to those areas of the borough with poor provision, none of the major fibre broadband providers decided to take part, so it is good to see that the council’s Superfast Swindon project has stimulated the market to provide even more choice for residents.

“The Superfast Swindon scheme has been rolled out to 9,000 residents and businesses so far and will extend to North Swindon in 2017.”