Yorkshire and The Humber
intouch Autumn 2013
Our half- year
financial results
highlighted the
fact that our fibre
network now passes
more than 17million
premises, with
more than 2million homes and
businesses using our fibre based
services.
Also noted alongside the commercial rollout
was the great progress with our BDUK
partnerships - you can read about some
of these and case studies of how SMEs are
reaping the rewards of fibre technology in
this issue. The success of BT Sport was also
highlighted, which is not only good news for
sports fans but also has the benefit of driving
broadband take up which can only have a
positive impact across the region.
You may also be aware that Ofcom has
just released their latest UK Infrastructure
Report. This report provides a very
comprehensive review of actual UK
communication infrastructure as of today.
It highlights the strong position of the UK
compared to major EU countries, and the US
in particular, against the key government
targets of SFBB coverage, take up and
overall speed. The report also highlights that
most of the growth in coverage is a result
of BT’s continued investment in fibre and
recognise that the BDUK programme will
help to address this going forward.
But it’s not just about broadband - we take
our social responsibilities seriously at every
level of engagement. We are working with
organisations across the UK to help people
overcome the digital divide and providing
the technology and support for initiatives
such as BBC Children in Need.
It’s a very exciting time for us all.
New postcode checker for fibre broadband
The postcode checker – which tells users when
exchanges in their area are due to have fibre
broadband equipment installed – now offers
more precise information about the status of
their own local exchange.
Instead of telling users about all of the
exchanges in their area, the postcode checker
narrows it down to the exchange that serves
them, annotated with the symbol that
applies to the current super-fast status of the
exchange. This gives a much clearer picture of
whether they are likely to be able to receive
fibre services.

New postcode checker for
fibre broadband

Yorkshire looks forward to
super-fast future
New research shows fibre
 network boosting local
economy

Small businesses making it
big with fibre broadband

Power of fibre broadband
feature on YouTube

Young people given a
sporting chance

Disabled people still facing
digital divide

South Yorkshire MPs witness
power of new fibre networks
Tom Keeney, Regional Director for Yorkshire
and The Humber
tom.keeney@bt.com.
Openreach’s recently launched
new-look super-fast broadband web
page now gives customers a better
idea of when their exchange will be
upgraded.
 Regional Director’s Message
The checker will provide the information
required for 99 per cent of enquiries – the
exceptions being where postcodes straddle a
number of exchange boundaries,
as they do in Shropshire and Wales.
The new web page also features a list of all
internet service providers offering fibrebased broadband services on the Openreach
network, plus a new ‘don’t let your internet
connection hold you back’ video animation.
In addition, it has been made more mobilefriendly, so it can be viewed on phones and
tablets more easily.
The web page now attracts around 200,000
visitors, and delivers around 25,000
clickthroughs to ISP websites every month.
Check it out at www.superfast-openreach.
co.uk
Skipton company boosts
 health with super-fast
broadband

BT funds for local community
groups
Yorkshire and The Humber
intouch Autumn 2013
Yorkshire looks forward to super-fast future
Councils across Yorkshire and The
Humber have recently agreed multimillion pound deals with us that
will transform broadband speeds
throughout the region by the end
of 2015.
Superfast West Yorkshire – a partnership
between Leeds City Council, Bradford
Metropolitan District Council, Wakefield
Council and Calderdale Council and ourselves
– plans to extend high-speed fibre broadband
to 97 per cent of homes and businesses across
the majority of the county within the next two
years.
In addition, a demand stimulation and
business support programme will be
developed together with Kirklees Council,
to demonstrate the benefits of high-speed
internet to firms and households. This part
of the project has already generated demand
from over 780 businesses and residents across
West Yorkshire through the website www.
superfastwestyorkshire.co.uk
Meanwhile, thanks to Broadband East
Riding, a joint venture between East Riding
of Yorkshire Council and ourselves, superfast fibre broadband delivering speeds of
24Mbps and above will be rolled out to
more than 42,000 of the area’s homes and
businesses within the next three years.
Both these partnership projects build on the
existing commercial fibre deployment across
the region, and aim to ensure that everyone
in the locations covered will be able to enjoy
speeds of more than 24Mbps.
Superfast West Yorkshire and Broadband East
Riding will be announcing the installation
schedule in the coming months, and the
first communities across both areas can look
forward to improved access to online services
and better connectivity for businesses from
2014 onwards.
Similar contracts have also just been signed
covering Newcastle; Merseyside; Derbyshire,
Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire;
Worcestershire; Berkshire and Oxfordshire;
Essex, Milton Keynes and Bedfordshire.
Communications Minister Ed Vaizey said:
“This investment will transform broadband
speeds for thousands of homes and
businesses in these areas. This will be
instrumental in driving growth, boosting
the local economy and achieving the
government’s objective of reaching 95 per
cent of all UK premises by 2017.”
BT’s Bill Murphy and Councillor Gruen, Leeds City Council.
New research shows fibre network boosting local economy
New independent research by
SERIO at Plymouth University and
Buckman Associates shows that the
fibre network in Cornwall is already
providing a major economic boost
to local small and medium-sized
enterprises (SMEs) - making it one of
the best connected areas in Britain
and the best connected rural region
in Europe.
In fact, six out of every 10 (58 per cent) SMEs
surveyed said their business is growing because
of the new technology, whilst more than a
quarter (26 per cent) have either created
or safeguarded jobs as a direct result of the
efficiency and innovation that super-fast
broadband encourages.
Early findings from the study revealed that
after 12 months, 83 per cent of them were
saving time and money thanks to the faster
speeds and innovative services that fibre
broadband enables.
Nigel Ashcroft, Superfast Cornwall programme
director for the Cornwall Development
Company, said: “The economic benefits of the
infrastructure investment will grow over time,
In addition, over a third of businesses
participating in the study (37.5 per cent)
reported that super-fast broadband had
helped their business to generate new sales,
with a quarter (24 per cent) of that group
pointing to new trade overseas.
but we have encouraging early signs that we
are moving in the right direction in Cornwall.
Given the challenging economic conditions
for SMEs, it is great news that businesses are
growing, generating new sales and creating
jobs for the Cornwall economy.”
More than 35,000 local homes and businesses
are already taking advantage of the faster
speeds, including an estimated 4,130 SMEs.
The Superfast Cornwall project is on track
to deliver fibre broadband to 95 per cent
(originally 80 per cent) of the region, as well as
the Isles of Scilly, by the end of 2014. It is also
aiming to boost speeds for the remaining 5 per
cent of premises (about 13,000) by deploying
alternative technologies.
www.superfastcornwall.org
Yorkshire and The Humber
intouch Autumn 2013
Small businesses making it big with fibre broadband
Businesses all over the UK are now
seeing the benefits of upgrading to
fibre broadband. And for small and
medium enterprises (SMEs), faster
speeds have transformed the way
they work and their relationships
with their clients, as two satisfied
customers explain below.
Brian Rees is company chairman of the if
Agency, an integrated creative agency based in
South Manchester that delivers effective online
and offline campaigns for retail, leisure, finance
and other business clients across the country.
“When we set up six years ago, we quickly
embraced ‘first generation’ broadband
with ADSL that ran at 5Mbps downstream
and 800Kbps upstream. This helped but it
wasn’t a full answer. Large files still couldn’t
be transferred efficiently and many chunky
pieces of artwork were biked up and down
motorways, adding risk, time and cost to jobs.
“We understood that we needed better
connections to compete successfully against
nationally-networked agencies, and to work
more effectively with our blue-chip clients.
“Our IT consultant outlined the benefits we
could gain from fibre broadband with a superfast connection. We found that BT was offering
its new BT Infinity services in the region
and responded immediately to its customer
marketing. After two days of installation work
in November 2010, we have never looked
back.
“Using fibre connections, we are more
responsive than ever, and can now zap
45Mbps downstream and about 13Mbps
up. We worried about the cost and possible
inconvenience, but this game-changing
improvement in the service we can offer has
not cost us a premium, and we didn’t suffer
any disruption to our business.
“We understand that our connections are
the platform for our continuing success. We
always keep a close eye on BT’s plans and
developments so we’re best positioned to
take advantage of the latest technologies in
our ever-changing and furiously competitive
business.”
Stuart Landreth is one of the founders and
directors of Northumberland-based BeeBox
Systems, which provides background music
systems and digital signage to bars, clubs,
hotels, restaurants and family entertainment
centres across the North East and, increasingly,
throughout the country.
“The traditional industry model for providing
music services – still widely in use today – is
particularly slow and inflexible. The service
provider receives new material from the
content provider, processes it onto a computer,
burns it to a CD, and then sends it by post to
the venue for the landlord to upload locally. It
takes at least a week to complete the end-toend process when nothing goes wrong.
“Using fibre broadband, we upload new
content to our servers as it arrives from our
providers. Every night, each customer’s system
automatically downloads a scheduled daily
update that includes new releases and any
requests that they have made. If anything goes
wrong or our customer needs a last-minute
change, our fibre connection allows us to fix
the problem remotely, in real time, often while
the customer is still on the phone.
“Super-fast fibre has transformed the range
and quality of services we can offer. We have
two BT Infinity lines with a custom-designed
router that helps to load balance our needs for
fast content turnaround, and are moving away
from desktop-based software to a web-based
and cloud-based management system so that
we can work from anywhere, at any time.
“We no longer experience capacity constraints
that affect our general office systems, so
we use all our time far more effectively.
We automate where we can to add new
services, and to keep our costs low and prices
competitive.”
If your business has received a boost from fibre
broadband, and you would like your story to
be featured as a case study in a future edition
of InTouch, we would love to hear from you.
Please contact regions.comms@bt.com
Power of fibre broadband featured on YouTube
The winning entries in a short story
competition held in Northern Ireland
have been turned into thoughtprovoking films on the power of fibre
broadband and they can now be
found on YouTube.
write a 500-word story illustrating how fibre
broadband can transform people’s lives. Take a
look at these inspiring videos – they really help
bring the story to life.
Northern Ireland Broadband’s ‘Super Short’
competition challenged teenage citizens to
Another inspiring video available on YouTube
has been produced, capturing the great work
Fourteen-year-old Enniskillen student Dorothy
McDowell’s film can be viewed here. Twelveyear-old Lisburn student Amy Warke’s film can
be viewed here.
that is going on in Cornwall via the Get IT
Together programme to help local people take
their first steps to get online.
You can view the video on the Better Future
YouTube channel here.
Yorkshire and The Humber
intouch Autumn 2013
Young people given a sporting chance
An exciting new venture between
BT and its BT Sport partners and
Comic Relief is using the power of
sport to help disadvantaged young
people both here in the UK and
around the world.
The Supporters Club has been set up to raise
money to fund the coaches, mentors and
teachers that these young people need to
help them to fulfil their potential.
When customers sign up to BT Sport
through our call centres, bt.com or www.
thesupportersclub.org, they are being
invited to make a recurring £1, £3 or £5
monthly donation to The Supporters Club,
collected via their BT bills. However, people
who haven’t signed up to BT Sport but wish
to contribute can do so through our website
as well.
BT have donated £500,000 from various
initiatives to kick things off and will match
every £1 given by customers up to the first
£1 million. In addition, we are covering
the running costs of the fund so that 100
percent of donations will go straight to The
Supporters Club, which will be managed by
Comic Relief.
The scheme aims to support initiatives both
in the UK and overseas that utilise the power
of sport to help disadvantaged young people
improve their lives. These include projects
that boost enrolment and achievement in
school; reduce levels of exploitation and
abuse; secure jobs; improve health and
wellbeing; and heighten confidence and
self-esteem. We will be regularly updating
our website and producing TV programmes
featuring projects funded by The Supporters
Club, which will be broadcast on BT Sport.
Business responsibility matters to BT, and
social responsibility is a central part of our
business strategy. The Supporters Club as an
effective way for us to work hand in hand
with our customers and our employees to
make a real difference to disadvantaged
young people.
Already, thousands of customers and BT
employees have signed up to donate to
The Supporters Club, bringing in around
£300,000 a year, which BT will match –
adding a further £300,000 in the pot. To
find out more about the scheme, visit www.
sport.bt.com
Disabled people still facing digital divide
The potential for mainstream
technology to transform the
lives of the 11 million disabled
people in the UK remains largely
untapped, according to research
funded by BT’s Connected Society
programme.
In a new report, disability charity Scope and
the Royal College of Art’s Helen Hamlyn
Centre for Design argue that disabled
people still encounter a huge digital
divide – and that many still have to choose
between expensive specialist equipment
and inaccessible mainstream gadgets.
Researchers from the Helen Hamlyn Centre
for Design discovered that technology
built for disabled people is expensive,
offers low functionality and often requires
specialist knowledge to adapt. Mainstream
technology, like iPads and Windows Tablets,
is cheaper and can do much more, but is
rarely customised to meet disabled people’s
needs.
To coincide with the launch of the report –
entitled Enabling Technology – BT, Scope
and the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design
unveiled a series of digital technology
prototypes at the London Design Festival in
September. These included:
The research also found that the
information available to disabled people
about enabling technology needs to be
improved. They are amongst the groups
least likely to use the internet, and are
20 per cent less likely to be online than
their peers – despite the huge potential of
services like online shopping and banking
which could transform their lives.
•the ‘Tailored Touch’ mouse, which can be
made from touch-sensitive pads on any
surface, and in any shape or size
With this in mind, the report outlines
a series of recommendations for
technology companies, commissioners
and the providers of key digital services to
maximise the ‘enabling potential’ of digital
technology.
•the ‘Pop-up Reader’, which allows a
blind or partially-sighted person to read
letters and other documents via their
smartphone.
The Enabling Technology report, plus
accompanying videos, can be found at
http://blog.scope.org.uk/2013/09/20/
technology-for-disabled-people
Yorkshire and The Humber
intouch Autumn 2013
South Yorkshire MPs witness power of new fibre networks
The company recently demonstrated
the technology behind the roll-out
of super-fast fibre broadband to
two local Members of Parliament
explaining how it works and why it’s
essential for the future success and
prosperity of the region.
Paul Blomfield, MP for Sheffield Central, made
a visit to one of our live fibre broadband street
cabinets in Sharrow. More than 157,000
premises in the Sheffield area are now able
to join the high-speed revolution, and by the
end of this year, around 186,000 local homes
and businesses are set to benefit from our
£2.5 billion roll-out programme.
Meanwhile, Rosie Winterton, MP for Doncaster
Central, visited a street cabinet on St Mary’s
Road, in the Doncaster area, where fibre
broadband is already available to over 91,000
firms and households.
Openreach engineers demonstrate fibre technology to Paul Bloomfield, MP
Following their visits, both MPs encouraged
local people to reap the benefits of this major
investment in high-speed fibre broadband.
Tom Keeney, BT Regional Director, said: “We’re
very pleased that Paul and Rosie have been
able to come and explore the inner workings of
our roll-out of fibre broadband. Local people
may have noticed our green street cabinets
being installed around their towns. This
everyday street furniture is where the magic
happens.
Rosie Winterton, MP, with Trevor Higgins, RPD exploring
fibre technology
“Fibre broadband opens up a whole new world
to internet users. Local residents will be able to
access new job opportunities, and shop around
for cheaper services. Fibre is transforming the
way we use the internet as more than a million
UK households and businesses have already
discovered.”
Our fibre footprint currently passes more than
16 million UK homes and businesses. It is
expanding all the time and is now due to pass
two-thirds of the country’s premises – around
19 million – during spring 2014, at least 18
months ahead of the original timetable.
Openreach is primarily deploying Fibre To The
Cabinet (FTTC) technology, which provides
download speeds of up to 80Mbps and
upload speeds of up to 20Mbps. However, it
is also making Fibre To The Premises (FTTP)
technology, which offers the top current
download speed of 330Mbps, commercially
available on demand in certain areas where
fibre broadband has been rolled out.
For further information on the Openreach
programme, visit www.superfast-openreach.
co.uk
Yorkshire and The Humber
intouch Autumn 2013
Skipton company boosts health with super-fast broadband
In September, Skipton and Ripon
MP Julian Smith paid a fact-finding
visit to a local firm transforming its
business through super-fast fibre
broadband.
The arrival of the high-speed technology
has helped ensure the long-term future
of Principle Healthcare, one of the largest
employers in the Craven District, at Airedale
Business Centre in Skipton.
The company, which produces vitamin and
mineral supplements and has a manufacturing
plant in Slovakia, was one of the first
businesses in the area to sign up to fibre
broadband when it was enabled by Superfast
North Yorkshire in July this year.
Mike Davies, group chief executive officer,
said: “Before the arrival of fibre, relocation was
something we would have had to seriously
consider in the medium to long-term future.
Now, however, we can continue to plan for the
future at Airedale Business Centre, confident
that this technology can help us expand the
company in line with our aspirations.
“We have experienced many benefits since
moving onto fibre broadband. Improved
communication between our sites in Skipton
and Slovakia enables us to share information
and make decisions faster through conference
calls and video conferencing. We can
communicate faster with customers and
suppliers and we’re investigating how cloud
solutions can benefit the business.”
Julian Smith MP added: ”High-speed digital
connectivity is crucial for the long-term
success of our economy and, for companies
like Principle Healthcare, one of our leading
businesses which is growing and exporting
more and more, it is an essential development.
More than 7,000 Skipton and South Craven
homes and businesses can now benefit from
high-speed fibre broadband connections and
this provides a huge boost for our economy.”
Superfast North Yorkshire, an ambitious
partnership led by North Yorkshire County
Council and BT, aims to bring fibre broadband
to 90 per cent of the county’s premises by the
end of 2014, with Airedale Business Centre just
one of the many areas of Skipton and South
Craven that can already access the technology.
More information on the local roll-out can be
found at www.superfastnorthyorkshire.com
In addition, Superfast North Yorkshire has
developed a free programme of business
support to help eligible small businesses in
the county cut costs, save time and improve
efficiency. For further details, visit www.sfny.
co.uk/.
BT funds for local community groups
The company is rewarding
organisations and community groups
across Yorkshire and the Humber
with grants of up to £1,000.
The donations are being made through our
employee recognition scheme, the BT People
Awards, which were launched last year. The
scheme acknowledges our volunteering
heroes, who offer their time and skills to help
people in their local community, by awarding
grants to organisations with which they are
involved.
Thirteen groups in Yorkshire and The Humber
have received funds to help them to continue
their work in the community, including:
Monk Fryston JFC in Burton Salmon, Harthill
Pre-School in Sheffield and Kippax Amateur
Swimming Club in Kippax.
Tom Keeney, BT Regional Director, said: “BT
has a long history of working with good causes
to help improve lives. We see volunteering
as a two-way benefit as there are many
development opportunities when new skills
are brought back into the workplace. Some
of these experiences can only be gained
by playing such an active role in the local
community.”
For more information, and a complete list
of the latest award recipients, go to www.
btpeopleawards.co.uk.
To find out more about BT’s wider portfolio of
activities please see our new brochure at
www.bt.com/charityportfolio