AROUND 55,000 households and businesses are now able to access superfast broadband thanks to the multi-million pound Black Country Broadband Project.

The project was launched to bring fibre broadband to areas of the region that are not already able to access faster fibre broadband as a result of any commercial roll-outs of fibre broadband by the private sector .

Areas including Blackheath, Brierley Hill, Dudley town centre, Halesowen, Kingswinford, Lye and Sedgley are now able to benefit from the technology.

So far, engineers from Openreach – the business responsible for Britain’s largest phone and broadband network - have installed nearly 290 kilometres of optical fibre and more than 520 fibre broadband road-side cabinets for the project, which is led by the Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and BT Group.

Ninder Johal, board member for the Black Country LEP, said: “This is more great news for the Black Country and I urge local businesses and residents to seize the many benefits that these exciting technologies bring.

"We’re keen for more local people to take advantage and upgrade their broadband service, which they can do at little or no extra cost, to ensure they don’t get left behind in a world where so many things rely on us having access to fast, reliable broadband."

Because the project is being rolled out by Openreach, residents and businesses opting for an upgrade can choose from a wide range of broadband service providers.

Steve Haines, Openreach’s managing director of next generation access, added: “The Black Country Broadband Project builds on Openreach’s own commercial roll-out of high-speed fibre broadband across the West Midlands.

"As part of our ongoing commitment to the region, we have also chosen Brierley Hill as one of our new pilot areas for ‘ultrafast’ broadband – providing access to download speeds of up to 330 megabits per second – which we aim to make available to around 12 million UK premises by 2020.”

For more information about the project, visit www.blackcountrylep.co.uk/place/broadband-plan.