How did an isolated, left-wing city in the northeast become a global high-tech pioneer?

If Hull were an independent nation, it would be the country with the fastest universal broadband in the world

Rosie Millard
Friday 11 October 2019 18:27 BST
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Happiest Places to live in Britain revealed

Sneering southerners (and the occasional person from West Yorkshire) used to have a deeply irritating way of categorising Hull as “the place that time forgot.” Stepping out of Hull’s main (and only) station into the blistering East Riding wind, they would clock newspaper sellers hawking the local paper, doughty cafes selling buns, and bargain clothes stores alongside the lack of a John Lewis and dismiss it as pathetically behind the times.

However, Hull has the knack of surprising people. The City of Culture that two years ago engaged 90 per cent of its citizens and welcomed visitors from Kofi Annan to the Queen has quietly done it again, by becoming the first city in the UK to make universal high-speed fibre broadband a reality.

This is where a fibre-optic cable comes right into your house rather than a nearby box on the street; and this service is now available to every house on every single one of the modest streets of Hull.

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