Northumberland is set to receive a broadband upgrade that should benefit more than 21,000 homes and businesses.

The upgrade, carried out by Openreach, includes bringing full fibre broadband to five more towns and villages including Bedlington, Belford, Embleton, Prudhoe and Seaton Delaval.

Openreach has already granted 69,000 homes and businesses across Northumberland access to the broadband technology, and the company is now committed to adding 517 more locations across the UK.

This will cover an additional 2.71 million homes and businesses.

Openreach regional director for the North, Robert Thorburn, said: "This is a huge infrastructure success story across Northumberland.

"No company is building faster or further in Europe, that we’re aware of.

"We won’t be stopping either. We plan to build even further across the county, to more towns, villages and our most rural communities.

"And our engineers are doing this at a rapid pace - despite this being a hugely complex engineering project.

“Our fibre checker has the latest information about our work in your area. It’s also worth noting that upgrades aren’t automatic.

"Once full fibre is available where you live, you’ll need to place an order to get connected and we’ll do the rest.

“Openreach’s network offers the widest choice of providers such as BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone and Zen – which means people have lots of choice and can get a great deal.”

The upgrades are part of a £15 billion project by Openreach with an aim to make gigabit-capable technology available to 25 million homes and businesses by the end of 2026.

This will include 6.2 million homes and businesses in harder-to-reach remote and rural areas.

The number of homes and businesses that have already upgraded to full fibre across the UK stands at more than 4.7 million.

With more than 50,000 orders being placed each week, demand continues to grow.

Openreach has refreshed its online map and postcode checker to provide updated views of its plans and progress through 2026.

The map, which is available on their website, shows current and future expected full fibre coverage, while the postcode checker offers a personalised view of the connectivity available to each home or business.