17 July 2012 Last updated at 09:17 ET

North Yorkshire's £70m broadband project starts

The project will give almost all of the county's 365,000 premises fast broadband

BT has been named as the provider of the £70m superfast broadband project to be provided in North Yorkshire.

The county was one of four pilot areas chosen by the government and the first to start installation according to North Yorkshire County Council.

Connecting North Yorkshire will help most of the 365,000 businesses and domestic users in the county.

Work on the fibre-optic underground cable network will start immediately and be 90% complete by 2014.

County Councillor Carl Les, the deputy leader of North Yorkshire County Council and chairman of Connecting North Yorkshire said: "We believe the technology is vital to our economic future.

"It can also play an important role in attracting even more firms to the county thereby helping to create jobs for local people."

The project will mean 90% of North Yorkshire's 365,000 homes and business premises will have access to broadband speeds of up to 80Mbps by the end of 2014.

Speeds of up to 330Mbps will also be deployed in certain areas and made available 'on demand' if businesses want to upgrade to even faster speeds .

In October 2010 Chancellor George Osborne named North Yorkshire, along with Cumbria, Herefordshire, and the Highlands and Islands, as pilot areas for rural superfast broadband networks.