EXTRA homes in Bolton, Horwich and Atherton are set to share in a new broadband roll-out programme.

Bosses at Openreach say 196,000 more homes will benefit from a £58m investment scheme for a network used by subscribers to BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone and Zen

Other locations to be included in the project include Alderley Edge, Bollington, Burnley, Padiham, Pendleton, Rainford and Stepping Hill.

Robert Thorburn, Openreach’s regional director for the North, said: “No-one in the UK is building full fibre faster, further or at a higher quality than Openreach.

"We’re reaching more communities than ever and our team of highly-skilled engineers, alongside our build partners, are working hard to deliver some of the fastest and most reliable broadband available anywhere in the world.

“In 2021 our engineers built around 770 metres of new broadband cables every minute – making Ultrafast broadband available to another home every 13 seconds.

"We’ve already reached six million homes and businesses across the UK with ultrafast full fibre technology including more than 815,000 in the North West but we know there’s more to do and we’re committed to doing it.”

The firm says full fibre broadband is up to 10 times faster than the average home broadband connection and around five times more reliable than the traditional copper-based network, providing more predictable, consistent speeds for consumers.