NORTH Yorkshire is on the brink of broadband revolution, council chiefs have said after it agreed a multi-million pound project.

North Yorkshire County Council’s executive has agreed on a preferred bidder to take the Connecting North Yorkshire initiative forward after North Yorkshire was one of four pilot areas chosen by the Government to develop high-speed broadband.

The council will invest some £25 million in the scheme from Broadband UK and the European Regional Development Fund and the successful bidder, which will be announced later this month, will broadly match that amount, adding up to a total investment of some £50 million in an underground network of fibre-optic cables across North Yorkshire.

Connecting North Yorkshire will make high-speed broadband available to the vast majority of communities in the county, opening up new business opportunities and giving private households the kind of online access currently only enjoyed by the residents of major cities, said Coun Carl Les, the chairman of Connecting North Yorkshire.

“It will boost the economy of North Yorkshire in so many ways - by giving existing small businesses the opportunity to expand their markets and work more efficiently, and by attracting start-up firms to a part of the world where they would not previously have been viable,” he said.