HIGH speed broadband will be available to residents in a town for the first time.

Faster and more reliable services are to come to Dalton residents and businesses, it has been announced.

Openreach, the UK’s largest telephone and broadband network, said the town would be among 81 locations to be upgraded under their ultrafast broadband investment.

Craig Fox, of Furness Engineering and Technology, and a member of Dalton with Newton Town Council was pleased by the news.

He said: “I think this would be a great idea.

“It would be a great benefit for people and businesses in the area.

“I would welcome this new broadband being introduced.”

The changes are said to provide enough bandwidth for a family of four to all stream ultra high definition or 4K quality movies or TV simultaneously.

Kim Mears, Openreach’s managing director for strategic infrastructure development, said: “Currently, the UK is a world leader in digital infrastructure and services, but as the digital revolution rushes forwards and the demand for data continues to grow, we need to sure we stay ahead of the curve.

“That’s why we’re investing in faster, more reliable network infrastructure to facilitate all the activities we want to do now, and also those we haven’t even dreamt of doing in ten years’ time.”

The latest work in Dalton uses a technology called Gfast, which builds on existing infrastructure, changing the way broadband signals are transmitted to make them ultrafast without the need to dig up roads and install new cabling all the way to the property.

The new services will allow people to access broadband speeds seven times the national average.

Openreach also said it was continuing to deliver fibre optic broadband to rural areas, in partnership with the Government, to make sure some of the hardest to reach communities in the UK get access high speed networks.

The work to upgrade the network will take place over the next nine months.

The business plans to reach a total of 5.7 million properties using Gfast, and also wants to extend its FTTP rollout to 10 million premises by the mid 2020s 'if the conditions are right to invest'.