Construction has started on a £40m scheme that could give Swindon homes faster WiFi.

CityFibre has started a fibre upgrade for the town at Gorse Hill which could give homes faster WiFi that is expected to allow users to stream quicker and have faster downloads for video games.

Project manager Neil Madle believes it will be a noticeable difference for families.

He said: “We’re rolling out full fibre across Swindon. The UK has fallen behind a lot of other countries so we’re hoping to provide it to the town.

“The people in Swindon will be able to access giga-fast speeds. And this will be fibre directly to the home and that means you’ll be able to get much higher speeds, which is a lot more than a lot of speeds that are being advertised as ultra-fast or super fast at the moment.

“Speeds vary enormously across town, so what people will notice is that download speeds will be 20 times faster and upload speeds could be 150 times faster compared to current speeds.

“People will notice they can stream much more quickly and download games much more quickly, it’ll be easier to work from home and it enables people to take advantage of new technologies.”

Mr Madle added that the infrastructure being put in place will help the town for any technological advancements to come in the future.

The full rollout across the town will take approximately three years.

He added: “What it means is we’re future proofing Swindon for decades to come.

“It’ll have its bandwidth needs met for years to come. We don’t know what demands those will be in 20 years time but it’ll be greater than what we have now.

“All sorts of things are changing the way we live and the space we occupy at home.

“As a town you’re talking about becoming a smart city where all sorts of devices are connected together whether that’s CCTV cameras or bus shelters and smart benches. All sorts of public assets

He added: “And if you get to a stage where self-driving cars are a thing then they take out a huge amount of bandwidth, so this infrastructure will future proof against that, it’s not just faster speeds.”

The £40m being spent will be recovered from the internet providers that use it.