Superfast Telford fibre broadband rollout ahead of schedule

Lead partners Telford & Wrekin Council and BT announced the major milestone yesterday, which comes just a year after the £5.6m programme was announced and only three months after it started connecting the first premises to faster fibre broadband.

Councillor Shaun Davies, Telford & Wrekin Council’s cabinet member for Customer Services and Business, said: “It is fantastic news how quickly the project is progressing with residents and businesses in the first communities receiving the new technology ahead of schedule. Superfast is truly being delivered Superfast!”

Bill Murphy, BT’s managing director of next generation access, said: “Superfast Telford is an excellent example of the public and private sectors working effectively together for the good of the local community. As a result of this great team work, especially at the early planning stages of this project, we’ve been able to bring the benefits of faster fibre broadband to more households and businesses earlier than originally planned.”

By the end of 2017, around 9,300 homes and businesses will be able to get faster fibre broadband as a result of the Superfast Telford partnership with 8,800 of them able to access ‘superfast’ download speeds of 24 megabits (Mbps) and above.

When combined with the private sector’s commercial investment, it means 98 per cent of homes and businesses in the borough will be able to access high-speed fibre broadband by the end of next year.

Local households opting for an upgrade will be able to order fibre broadband with download speeds of up to 80 megabits per second (Mbps) and uploads of up to 20Mbps*.

The network being installed by Openreach – BT’s local network business - will enable people to choose from a wide range of broadband service providers. All the latest information on the programme can be found on the partnership’s website www.superfast-telford.co.uk including a map searchable by postcode.