Full-fibre connectivity revolutionises Leeds business community

Background A number of small businesses and farms based in Eltofts, a rural area of North Leeds, had been battling with staggeringly slow internet connectivity for years despite the installation of an expensive dual line setup. Something needed to change so the business community in Eltofts decided to work together to connect to the new full fibre network when they heard that Leeds became a Gigabit City. Challenge Many solutions from leading service providers involved delivering a connection over old copper overhead lines, however this had caused years of problems for the professionals in the area – engineers were even visiting as often as once a fortnight to repair faults. “For years Eltofts has suffered from slow internet speeds and sub-par services, in some cases spending over £80 per household for dual lines to achieve a mere 6Mbps download speed” said Andy Wright, Eltofts’ project manager. Solution Eltofts approached specialist business telecoms provider, Diva Telecom, to enquire about securing their own Gigabit City Leeds connection. Diva provided ultrafast gigabit speeds over a 24km length of fibre to Wetherby Road in Eltofts and from there residents dug their own trenches so that fibre could be laid directly to their home offices. [breakoutbox text="“We’ve experienced incomprehensible improvement and it has made a huge impact on all our lives. A fast and reliable connection is now a necessity for businesses and like many rural communities, we were being left in the dark ages.” Andy Wright, Eltofts’ project manager " color="lightgreen" /] After only four months, their high speed internet connection went live and 12 Eltofts premises were connected to the Gigabit City Leeds network. As a result they now have one of the fastest rural business broadband connections in the world, benefiting from upload and download speeds of up to 1 Gigabit per second. Discover more about Gigabit City Leeds here.