Stakeholders and business representatives across Southend gathered to celebrate the much anticipated 'lighting up' of the town's new full-fibre network.
CityFibre has activated Southend-on-Sea's Gigabit City network bringing a further 100 businesses within reach of the next-generation infrastructure.
Public sector sites in Southend will also see a step change in bandwidth delivery to help deliver high quality services as 100 sites join the network.
These include a number of primary and secondary schools, leisure, community and social care buildings as well as sheltered housing sites. A further 40 traffic/CCT sites are to be added over the coming months.
Councillor Trevor Byford, Executive Councillor for Technology at Southend-on-Sea Borough Council, said: "Digitally connecting people and services together is at the heart of what any 21st Century Council should be doing.
"Implementing an ultrafast fibre-to-the-premise infrastructure across Southend-on-Sea is an important foundation for delivering our ambitious digital strategy and smart city aspirations."
CityFibre and ISP Onecom celebrated 'lighting up' the town at a recent event hosted at the Hive Enterprise Centre, giving Southend businesses and community stakeholders the opportunity to learn about the Gigabit City movement and how it will benefit the area.
Nick Gray, City Development Manager at CityFibre said: "Now that the network is live we look forward to welcoming more business users to the network as they position themselves for future growth, while creating an attractive environment for new tech talent, start-ups and investment.
"We also look forward to connecting even more Borough Council sites to the network including libraries, leisure centres, museums, hospitals and other community facilities.
"This will not only support the smooth and efficient running of these services, it will lay the foundations for future developments such as HD CCTV, traffic management systems and public WiFi."