RESIDENTS in Peebles and Glentress can now access ultrafast broadband which will "transform people’s internet experience".

Engineers from telecoms company Openreach have recently been working in Tweeddale.

And they say 3,600 households and businesses can now connect to ‘ultrafast’ internet, which is capable of carrying speeds up to 1Gbps.

Residents in Glentress even rolled up their sleeves and helped engineers dig in 26km of cable across fields – enabling Openreach to extend the build several miles to their community.

Ian Porter, Openreach’s chief engineer for the south of Scotland, said: “We set out to bring full fibre broadband to as much of Peebles as possible, and we’ve made really good progress.

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“Copper has served us well for the last 100 years but it’s coming to the end of its working life.

“Local people here in the Borders can now be among the first in the UK to make the move to a fully fibre-optic network. It was brilliant that people in Glentress rolled up their sleeves to work with us – it meant the economics stacked up and they were not left behind.

“Demand for services in Glentress has been spectacular, with almost everyone already opting for an upgrade to make the most of their new high-speed network.

“Full fibre is the next generation of internet technology and this latest upgrade will transform people’s internet experience. Residents can check online to see if they’re now able to upgrade and should contact their service providers to find out about switching.”

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Peeblesshire residents also vocally welcomed the upgrade, which is part of a £12 billion plan to reach up to 20 million UK premises by the mid-to-late 2020s.

Stewart Maguire, of Glentress, said: “With two of us working from home during the pandemic and my two sons doing home-schooling lessons on their iPads, we desperately needed high-quality and reliable broadband.

“Now that Openreach has installed fibre we’re on full gigabit and it’s night and day with how things were before – we can easily balance multiple conference calls and gaming updates at the same time.

“The Openreach team were brilliant, kept the community updated throughout and catered to the requests of each of the 30 or so houses on the hill side. We’re really delighted with the installation. Transformative doesn’t even start to cover it.”