More than 273,000 households and businesses in Cambridgeshire now have superfast broadband, with Chatteris among the latest areas to benefit from faster connections.

More than 480 high speed fibre cabinets have already gone live in towns and villages across the county with many more to come by the end of 2015 completing the first phase of the roll-out.

The higher than expected take-up of the high speed technology has delivered a financial boost with another £5.3million being made available by BT via Broadband Delivery UK for Connecting Cambridgeshire to reinvest in extending high speed broadband to even more premises.

Planning is underway to extend the rollout further using additional funding from the Government’s Superfast Extension Programme (SEP) to improve broadband coverage for harder to reach areas and new developments during a second phase in 2016-2017.

Cambridgeshire County Councillor Ian Bates, chairman of the Economy and Environment Committee, which oversees the Connecting Cambridgeshire programme, said: “The importance of Connecting Cambridgeshire bringing high speed broadband to our communities and the value to the local economy is clear as the roll-out progresses.

“We are committed to connecting as many places as possible and there is still more to do to find the best solutions for more challenging areas. We welcome the opportunity to reinvest over £5million in the project and will be working with BT to plan how it can be used to extend coverage, targeting many of those properties in hard to reach places.”

Visit www.connectingcambridgeshire.co.uk for updates and advice on getting superfast broadband.