Superfast fibreoptic broadband offering gigabit connection is on its way to homes in Reading.

The town is one of six in the country outside London to be selected by internet service provider Hyperoptic Broadband to be one of its ‘hyper-cities’.

The company has set up an office in the town where about 20 people are being employed to provide customer service.

Philip Cooper, head of sales, said: “Reading is a very important area for us.

“The population density is there along with the demand for high-speed broadband.

“From our perspective it’s also part of the tech corridor and is the gateway to the West.

“Also, it’s important to us because we have our office there and employ 20 people in our customer services department and our field operations run out of there.”

Hyperoptic promises the high speed connection that will allow householders to download HD movies in less than 30 seconds, a 50GB game in less than seven minutes and up to 10 people will be able to stream uncompressed 4K TV at the same time.

Hyperoptic was founded in 2011 with the aim of providing one gig fibre to residential blocks of apartments and flats.

It has connected 150 buildings across London and is now also targeting Bristol, Cardiff, Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds.

Mr Cooper said: “We’ve fitted our equipment into everything from old-style mansion blocks, to 60s purpose- built blocks to the latest developments.”

He said the latest trend of converting vacant office blocks into apartments was also an ideal opportunity to have fibreoptic connection installed.

Mr Cooper said families would really notice the difference with gigabit broadband.

He said: “Films can be downloaded in seconds, people can have many different devices connected to the internet at once, such as the TV, mobile phone, the kids on an iPad, somebody on their laptop, which all causes congestion.

“Our service means that is alleviated and there’s a much better user experience.”

Mr Cooper is also confident the company can live up to its promises while other companies sometimes struggle to deliver due to their reliance on BT’s infrastructure.

He said: “It’s very distance dependent so it means the further you are from a street cabinet or telephone exchange, the speed you get will be vastly different because it degrades over distance.

“We provide fibre into the building and cable up the building from there so the speeds people are looking to get are the speeds that are being provided.”