Faster broadband for another 5,200 Shropshire homes and businesses
BT have announced plans to make faster broadband available to a further 5,200 homes and businesses in Shropshire.
Cleobury Mortimer and Wem are the latest communities in the county to be included in the roll-out of BT’s next generation broadband service delivered over copper lines. It is due to be upgraded by the Spring of next year.
The BT investment will make available download speeds of up to 20 megabits per second (Mbps) – more than double the speed previously available from BT.
The faster broadband is already available to more than 1.76 million homes and businesses across the region, including more than 126,000 in Shropshire, with Baschurch, Bayston Hill, Broseley and Hollinswood the most recent to go live.
By next Spring around 88 per cent of homes and businesses in the region will be served by an exchange which has been upgraded to deliver these higher speeds. The new service is available on an open, wholesale basis to all companies providing broadband.
John Dovey, BT’s West Midlands regional director, said: “The rapid roll-out of faster broadband offers a great opportunity for Cleobury Mortimer and Wem and the West Midlands as a whole. It is an important part of BT’s plans to help ensure that the county is able to take full advantage of the communications revolution.
“Around 84 per cent of West Midlands businesses and households now have access to this technology and within about a year this will have increased to nearly nine out of 10 premises in this region.
“The technology is having a major impact on our everyday lives and changing for the better the way we live, helping businesses work more efficiently and flexibly and to find new markets. And communities are better able to make use of the huge range of on-line educational and entertainment opportunities available.”
This investment in the copper network is in addition to BT’s £2.5 billion roll-out of fibre-based broadband, which will bring even faster speeds to around two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2014, including more than 1.13 million premises in the West Midlands of which more than 82,000 are in Shropshire.
