BT has been selected to deliver superfast broadband to 93 per cent of Shropshire.
The new Connecting Shropshire project will see the majority of families and companies able to order in faster broadband over the next three years. Though the county is one of the most rural and sparsely populated in England, there’s confidence that those out in isolated areas will still benefit from the rollout.
George Candler, commissioning director for Shropshire Council, said: “We have been working hard, through our Connecting Shropshire project, to drive forward improvements to broadband provision for residents and businesses, so we are delighted to have reached this point. We look forward to working closely with BT over the coming years to ensure people start seeing the benefits of faster broadband even in the remote, rural parts of our county.”
Read Recombu Digital’s report on Fibre Broadband and BDUK
Most of those in the 93 per cent fold will see FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) connections being rolled out to their areas, providing download speeds of up to 80Mbps. A lucky few will also benefit from deployment of the even faster and future-proofed FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) lines. Right now, BT FTTP connections provide download speeds of up to 330Mbps but we’ve seen that they can go even faster, up to 10Gbps if need be.
BT is contributing £8.6 million to the project while Shropshire Council is bringing in £8.2 million. A further £7.84m is coming from the government’s BDUK fund.
Like every other regional contract we’ve seen so far, those in the last 7 per cent will be guaranteed a service providing download speeds of at least 2Mbps and will likely be delivered via satellite broadband or bonded DSL.
According to the plan, more than 130,000 premises will have access to faster speeds by the end of Spring 2016.
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