Wrexham Council Leader, Councillor Mark Pritchard, has welcomed Freedom Fibre as they begin a £14m investment in rolling out their lightning-fast, full-fibre broadband network to homes and businesses in Wrexham County Borough.
Wrexham was granted City status earlier this year as part of Her Majesty the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations. A centre for manufacturing, education, and retail with circa 70,000 population, broadband services in Wrexham have fast been outgrown by the new city’s digital connectivity requirements.
Still heavily reliant on copper phoneline-based technology, current broadband speeds can be as low as 15Mb/s in some areas. But with Freedom Fibre’s new full-fibre network, homes and businesses across the borough will soon be able to enjoy internet speeds up to 1,000Mb/s, supporting further economic growth, futureproofing the city’s digital needs for generations to come, and preparing residents for the imminent copper switch off.
Speaking alongside Cllr David A Bithell, Deputy Leader of Wrexham Council, and Cllr Nigel Williams, Lead Member for Economy and Regeneration, Cllr Mark Pritchard, Leader of the Council, said:
“This represents a fantastic investment in Wrexham’s digital infrastructure and is very much welcomed by Wrexham Council. Creating a network that future-proofs Wrexham city centre and the whole county borough as well as giving residents a choice of full-fibre providers, which is very important.”
Work on this new infrastructure that will bring the UK’s fastest and most reliable broadband technology to Wrexham, is also Freedom Fibre’s first move into Wales and the team are delighted to begin extending gigabit connectivity to areas outside their current Cheshire, Greater Manchester, and Shropshire footprint.
Marie Danby, Customer Operations Director at Freedom Fibre, said:
“We’re so excited to see work starting on this digital project in Wrexham. Our full fibre network will support residents to enjoy unbeatable connectivity within the home and create innovation opportunities for local businesses.
“We would like to take this opportunity to re-assure the local community that our network rollout is designed to cause minimal disruption - using existing infrastructure wherever possible. However, any short-term disruption will pay off tremendously in the long-term so please bear with us.”
As the network rollout progresses, each neighbourhood will be released in stages as soon as they are ’ready for service’, and the first homes are expected to be able to connect to the network this winter.
Freedom Fibre is a next generation wholesale FTTP network provider aiming to bring connectivity to everyone through its rollout to over 2 million premises across the North West.
Residents looking to take advantage of the full-fibre network can register their interest to be notified when the service becomes available in their street.