Northumberland is to get a £8.7m boost to provide better broadband access to the county.

A deal between Northumberland County Council and One NorthEast via the Northumberland Strategic Partnership have agreed to jointly fund the investment £6.3m from the Council and £2.4m from One NorthEast.

The money will support the delivery of a Next Generation Broadband infrastructure to give a faster and bigger broadband capacity and plans to place Northumberland at the front of e-commerce. Although many might think of Northumberland as a backwater but with a rural broadband takeup of 40 percent, it rivals Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire.

This Northumberland Open Network, developed in 2006,  has provided a backbone fibre connection from Morpeth to an Internet Service Provider in Newcastle and now gives high speed broadband access to Northumberland County Council and to south east northumberland. The new plans will mean extending the network to provide fibre connections to Alnwick, Berwick, Tynedale and South East Northumberland.