SUPERFAST North Yorkshire celebrated the completion of its first phase with the ceremonial switching on of a fibre broadband cabinet in Masham.

The cabinet is the 1,000th to be installed across the county and is one of four serving the 800 homes and businesses in the market town.

Bosses at Superfast North Yorkshire (SFNY) say the progress and BT’s commercial broadband rollout together mean 90 per cent of the county’s 380,000 premises can now get high speed broadband.

Chief executive Scott Walters said the completion of the main part of the scheme was “fantastic news” for the homes and businesses which now have superfast connections.

He added: “With phase two we plan to make the technology available to a further 11,100 premises and hope to go further still with new fibre broadband technology we’ve been testing here in North Yorkshire.

“It also remains the stated vision of SFNY to enable access to High Quality broadband for 100 per cent of premises in North Yorkshire by the end of 2017.”

Masham is the latest of around 700 towns and villages that have been connected with fibre since the village of Ainderby Steeple, near Northallerton, was hooked up in December 2012.

Sue Burrell runs Masham’s, Millgate Bed and Breakfast, which was recently rated best in the world by TripAdvisor’s Travellers’ Choice awards.

Sue said: “One of the things you are now assessed on by websites like Booking.com is the quality of the broadband available to guests.

“These days it is seen as an essential, especially among the younger guests – it is the first thing they ask.

“With my old broadband connection I always knew when a guest was trying to log on because my work connection ground to a halt! I then ended up working very late into the evening just so I could get a better connection. When we won the award we were inundated with bookings and thousands of emails and it took ten days of working all day and into the early hours to clear the backlog as my email account was so sluggish. Having superfast broadband will now make a huge difference to us.”