Telford is the sixth-most digitally advanced area of Britain with a greater concentration of super-fast telecoms networks than Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds and Edinburgh, a new report has revealed.

Although London tops the list, with Wolverhampton in second place, Telford beat major cities to claim a place in the top ten which means firms in the town have increasing access to fast and more sophisticated video, internet, phone and data services.

The figures were released by ntl:Telewest Business, which reviewed the number of access points on its next generation fibre optic network for business telecoms customers. 

London is the most digitally advanced city in the UK, according to ntl:Telewest Business, part of the Virgin Media Group. 

As part of a review of its next-generation network reach across the UK, the company today revealed that the capital now has the highest concentration of next-generation access points with 5,857 available for businesses to tap into. 

ntl:Telewest Business offers the only UK-wide next-generation network, with more than 38,000 access points, debbed next generation “street cabinets”, covering more than 190 cities and towns across the UK. The former monopoly provider, BT, is currently upgrading its entire UK network to next-generation technology, with a target date for completion of 2011. 

However, UK business telecoms purchasers have little faith that BT will deliver by its 2011 deadline, according to a poll of 200 business network purchasers for ntl:Telewest Business. Just 27 per cent believed that BT will deliver this mammoth project on schedule.                                                            

Telford ranked the sixth most digitally advanced city in the UK with 859 next-generation street cabinets. The sixth largest city in the UK, Bradford, grabbed seventh place with 770 street cabinets. 

Stephen Beynon, managing director of ntl:Telewest Business, said: “Businesses in these regions can rest easy knowing that they are able to benefit from some of the fastest and most sophisticated telecommunications infrastructure in the UK. Ultimately, it means that businesses can take advantage of new and sophisticated communications tools, such as video calling and VoIP that prosper over a next-generation network.”

In the poll, network and telecom managers were quizzed on which technological enhancements their company would most benefit from by switching to a NGN. Ample bandwidth was ranked the number one benefit with 86 per cent. Availability of voice, data, video on any device at any time was second with 67 per cent. 

Sharing your contact directory across your work phone, personal phone, PDA and computer scored third place with 63 per cent. Moving seamlessly between the written and spoken word on a call scored 54 per cent. 

More than half (55 per cent) of IT managers considered the availability of a next generation network to be an important telecoms purchasing consideration. In fact, 35 per cent of companies said they would consider switching from BT’s current older technology network to a UK-wide next-generation network that is available today. This figure rose to 63 per cent among smaller firms (50 to 99 employees).