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£8.2m to speed up broadband in county
Tuesday 16th August 2011, 11:29AM BST.
Broadband speeds in rural and hard-to-reach areas in Shropshire today received a “massive boost” after the county was awarded more than £8 million to improve connections.
The money will be shared between Shropshire Council and Telford & Wrekin Council under a deal announced by Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt. But it still leaves a funding gap for Shropshire Council which had bid for £17m.
Today’s award is part of a £362m Government drive to ensure that 90 per cent of homes and businesses have access to superfast broadband by 2015.
County councils and the private sector will be put in charge of delivering faster broadband and will have to draw up delivery plans and find match-funding from elsewhere.
Councillor Martin Taylor-Smith, cabinet member responsible for IT at Shropshire Council, today said he was delighted with the £8.2 million cash pot.
He said the money would be used to create hubs or relays at locations including towers at fire stations and schools to serve different areas.
Campaign
Mr Taylor-Smith said the aim was to get minimum of speeds of 2MB to rural areas of the county, many of which have little or no broadband provision whatsoever.
He said money was also being invested in creating a high speed network for schools and fibre optic broadband in market towns.
Mr Taylor-Smith said: “This is a massive boost and is going to help in a really big way. Broadband is as important a utility in the modern world as water, gas and electricity.”
Colin Case is chairman of a centre where people can connect to the internet at Ruyton-XI-Towns, near Oswestry, who spearheaded a campaign which resulted in the village winning super-fast broadband provision.
He said the announcement was good news.
BT is preparing to upgrade exchanges for 10 areas, including Ruyton-XI-Towns, which were successful in its Race to Infinity competition.
In order to get the enhanced speeds, BT will have to replace copper wires with fibre optic cables.
Mr Case said: “We entered the Race to Infinity competition along with 2,800 other areas that entered. We were one of 10 winners which was great for us. The money the councils have received will be very useful.”
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County Councils put in charge?
This is going to take ages, then…
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Fantastic news. Let’s hope that this is the start of an exciting new project for Shropshire with the unerring support of all the local businesses and the two unitary local authorities working together on a joint bid. We could make Shropshire once again, the home of a wealth creating Industrial Revolution.
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A few quid to speed up the 2.5Mbps I get in Telford would be welcome.
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2.5Mbps? That’s stratospheric compared to the 512kbps I get in North Shrops!
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Yeah, but I live in ‘urban’ (well, right on the very edge of) Telford, where we’re all apparently supposed to get fantastic speeds!
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Just under 2 meg inbetween Lawley and Wellington.
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i lives just 0.2 miles out of the Shrewsbury bypass ring road boundary and get 1.1 m, yet folk just down the road (within town) get twice that!
odd
aslo my upload speed is half the down load speed – how does that work?
same cable right?
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The difference in speed isn’t odd, because speed on ADSL is dependent on the length of the phone line between you and the exchange. You live further away, so you get slower speeds. Also, the route your phone line takes is not going to be the straight line path between you and the exchange, it probably zigzags quite a bit, making it longer still.
I would like to try to explain why upload speeds are slower than downloads, but I don’t have room here. It’s due to electrical impedance and the frequency ranges used by DSL carrier signals.
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Luxury!
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It’s not just rural and hard to reach areas. I live in a modern housing estate very close to the town centre and can only get a paltry 1Mbps!
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beam me up !!
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I was going to comment but I couldnt get on the itnernet
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good news!
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Lets hope the money DOES go on to improve broadband speed. Thats where its suppose to go ok Shropshire Council not a new chair or refurbishment of an office etc etc. By the way my download speed is 0.5Mb and upload is 0.4Mb i am rural!!! When is this improvement happening then this year the next the one after that when?
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Hang on a minute, What about North Shrewsbury? Im in Sundorne and lucky if I see 150kbps weekends and evenings. 5 years ago I lived 150 yards closer to the Harlescott Exchange and enjoyed nearly 2mbps then!. But since moving, we’re now on the town walls exchange and quite clearly at the ‘end of the line’ and ultimately pick up the whatever speed is left after the rest of Shrewsbury has been fed.
Even after signing up to BT’s “Up to 20mb” I have still faired no better. If I invest about 3 hours complaining to all and sundry in India, I do get an amazing 1.5mbps, but over a couple of weeks this drops back to pitiful current speeds. (I have done this 3 times now with no permanent solution)
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@TC I completely agree. Something needs to be done about those in Sundorne connected to the town walls exchange. I sync at 2.5mbps download speed which for living in a town is pathetic. My line attenuation is a high 54dB which tells me my phone line back to the exchange is very long, which for some reason I am also routed to the town walls exchange rather than the closer harlescott exchange.
I know of people on the new estate by featherbed lane who are in newer house’s and are still routed to the town walls exchange with line attenuation’s of around 65dB who never see download speeds higher than 1mbps.
Both mine and their noise margins are also high in order to keep the line stable, further reducing broadband speeds.
This is why Shrewsbury (and the whole of Shropshire for that matter) needs fibre optic cables ASAP to be installed as it could easily speed things up for us on the end of the local loop.
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I feel your pain. It seems like complete pot luck at to what speeds you get. My brother lives out in the sticks and gets faster speeds than me!
I tried talking to BT about it years ago but if you’ve got a line made of a bit of old string, that veers around like a drunk heading home before it gets to your property, there isn’t much they can do.
I just hope the money gets spent wisely. If you take a look at this map
http://maps.ofcom.org.uk/broadband/
you’ll see how poor most of Shropshire (apart from Telford) is.
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My concern is that BT will take the money and not deliver the improvements.
Superfast Broadband is not the issue, just good speeds everyday would be an improvement.
Can we just have the service we already pay for?
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how typical though of the government to give not quite enough money to actually deliver the programme, so the headline should be “councils left with headache” or “councils left with black hole to fill”. basically the councils will now have to raise taxes locally or cut back on schools and bin collections to fund rich rural farmers having internet connections which they will use in the main for surfing facebook and watching u tube!
Surely people should pay for this themselves or the market could deliver it?
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£8.2 m hey?
so that will be 4.2 m on administration and project management, i reckon atleast one if not two full time “information development officers” perhaps a “community development manager” and a couple of administration and research officers to help them out.
once thats been done i guess about 3 m will go on consultancy studies to develop reports about how hard it is to get planning permission for any infrastructure in shropshire.
then some roadshows and of course a glossy brochure, that should sink about 0.5 m of the budget.
then of course kim ryley will need broadband in his office, that with a new desk and some i pads should swallow 0.4 million
that leaves £0.1 mil to lay cables, should get you about 30 meters of cable laid,
good old council
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Wrong. Base plan is already done and I am reviewing it this afternoon now we know what money we are getting. We have already added £2m to the £8.21 pot and will be forming partnerships to attract additional money.
Our backbone fibre optic network was completed at the end of March on time and budget!
The detail is on http://www.connectingshropshire.co.uk
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That is good to hear. Will people know if their area is likely to be covered, and if it isn’t will there be any comeback?
I did hear fibre to the cabinet was heading Shrewsbury’s way in 2012 but I couldn’t find any information on cabinet locations to know if it would benefit me.
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“our backbone fibre network means what exactly?” Have all Councillors now got super fast broadband to go with their iPads? Have BT confirmed that exchanges are ready for a FTTC roll out? Be more specific, Councillor.
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The backbone network connects our offices, depots, schools etc and involved upgrades to many of the local exchanges. Clearly we are working with BT and other suppliers. See the website for detail.
iPads are being used by a number of employees as well as some councillors.
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this website seems a bit light on detail so far!! is there really a plan?
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See 19
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Greetings from sunny Oz and welcome to the 21st century Salopians!
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why cant people be happy for once, this is great news, but typically of people in shropshire they come on here and its just moan moan moan
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Good work this is just what UK PLC needs right now, motorways and hs2 next please, we need govt investment in modern infrastructure esp transport and energy which drive forwards the economy and encourages the private sector to invest more too so its win win
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this will be useful for farming communities who increasingly have to do admin online with defra returns and stock ordering and all sorts so it will really help businesses who have no choice but to locate in isolated areas to interact with the modern city based economy via the web, this means our farmers can reduce their operating costs, be more profitable and produce food cheaper so we all save money which then recirculates into the rest of the economy so its not just rural areas that benefit, everyone wins if there is efficiency gains and more business activity
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@Harry – well said! DEFRA, VAT, et al are moving to online access which is quite difficult if upload and download speeds are slower than slug on vallium like mine. Bring it on!
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Something needs to be done I signed up for 20Mbps and was aghast when I only got 17Mbps at the most.(I am on cable), with BT or any company that uses BT phones lines I’d be lucky to get 2Mbps and I live in a town
The copper wires BT uses are well past their sell by date this should have been done years ago, I bet BT directors who live in rural locations don’t have to put up with 512Kbps
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You mean you signed up for *up to* 20Mbps.
You’re right about the copper though. Some of it is in such a poor state of repair that it’s a surprise a humble phone signal gets through, let alone data.
A perfect example of this: several years ago my parents, who live in a tiny hamlet, needed ISDN. In order to provide it, BT first had to remove TPON from the line and then rejoint it all the way back to the exchange. This included cleaning out thirty years’ worth of rotten leaves from a waterlogged junction point and re-insulating the bare wires. When their exchange was finally enabled for ADSL, they found they were getting around 7Mbps whereas the neighbours (with their worn out lines that hadn’t been repaired) were – and still are – getting substantially less.
Trouble is, BT have no interest in making good the existing lines because they’re not required to provide anything more than a voice service and basic data access, so they’re happy to let the infrastructure continue to rot.
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@Jake – sounds familiar. At least BT has now buried our cable so it doesn’t either get chewed by cattle or shredded by the hedge-trimming flail! It’s still badly corroded and gets crackly when the ground is waterlogged…
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BT are content to do nothing to improve old-technology rural lines, thereby saving the company vast amounts of money. Unfortunately, when you sign up for broadband they expect you pay the same price whether you are on fibre and get 20Mbps or copper and get only 512kbps. There can surely be no other business that is allowed to get away with charging the same for an inferior product as for a top-of-the-range one. Outrageous!
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Is it efficient to put ten miles of fibre optic cables out to villages of 20 houses??
Or would it be better to create central clusters / hubs in the larger villages and towns, where people could go and use one PC which is using a mobile dongle instead ??
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It probably is efficient, in the long run, if you assume that *at some time* in the future the existing copper cable will need replacing. Fibre’s cheaper because it can carry huge quantities of data and so it’s just a matter of when, not if.
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This is really good news, just what we need right now, i am sure the project will be a success, I would like to add really well done to everyone involved in securing this funding
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Papers are going to cabinet on the 14th September with the aim of rolling out the detail through ‘local joint committee’ meetings in October. The website will be updated with the detail as the project progresses
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Superb!
Any money coming here is welcomed at the mo’.
Lets hope it makes some of the rural business parks and home working solutions more viable too but I would reiterate the need to improve speeds in Shrewsbury too and actually it would probably / arguably add more economic value to get Shrewsbury up to 5mbps rather than say Clun up to 1?
Also there is no mobile phone signal in Clun, please can that be looked at too!
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“it would probably / arguably add more economic value to get Shrewsbury up to 5mbps rather than say Clun up to 1″
Not if you happen to live in or run a business from Clun. The object must be to bring EVERYONE up to at least 2Mbps, otherwise don’t bother to waste more public money on it.
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why is it the people of Shropshire seem to welcome investment in broadband infrastructure, and yet when there is any talk of Biomass plants, incinerators, road bypasses, telephone masts, wind turbines and the like they all run to the hills screaming about cancer and NIMBYISM etc?
its mad
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why only 8.2 million ,devon is getting 30 million
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They need to install lots more boilers to raise enough steam to drive the phone system in Devon :o)
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Population of Devon: 1,141,600
Population of Shropshire: 454,900
Devon is also twice the geographical size of Shropshire.
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then clearly we need to increase the birthrate in shropshire, lets spend the money on dating websites and marriage counselling instead, then shropshire will get more government money, right?
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SO IN THAT CASE I MAKE THAT
£27 PER RESIDENT FOR DEVON
VERSUS
£19 PER RESIDENT FOR SHROPSHIRE AND TELFORD AND WREKIN
I WOULD SAY WE HAVE BEEN SHORT CHANGED THEN
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everyone is saying “well done” to the council but its just a hand out of funding every council in the country got some so its not like they competed for it and won it because they were better than the others is it, its just taxing my tax i pay to the westminster government through the inland revenue and giving it to the county council
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lets just be glad…
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Re your quote to the Star Mr Smith, that really is a sweeping statement
“Broadband is as important a utility in the modern world as water, gas and electricity.”
I’m not sure that it stands up there with the other utilitys, without electricity you would not have broadband and try asking the starving kids in africa if they find broadband more important then water so they can grow crops.One day it will all come crashing down and we will all be back to basics.
Does the 2 million that you have to play around with come from the savings you are making consolidating the HR Finance and IT departments or is that required for the consultants to carry out the work.
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what will be the cost to the LOCAL ratepayer ie to top off the funding shortfall? AND what will be the pay back to the ratepayer ie extra business rates paid by new IT firms based out on the Stiperstones and such
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Everything is relative. In a modern major economy broadband is a vital utility. In third world countries clean water, which we already have, is a higher priority.
The £2m was put in this years CAPITAL budget for broadband and nothing to do with the shared services project.
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I’m not sure about it being a vital utility and it’s easy to say everything is relative.There are many things which you could say are a higher prioity than broadband it all depends what you want from life. Sometime we need to stop and take stock before we just go on spending money.
So why was £2m allocated to broadband at a time the council need to save the millions it claims. Should we not be more prudent and be cutting everything untill it is affordable just as the Con/Lib Govt are doing. Please don’t say it’s to make savings in the long term and it’s in the name of progress.
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of course its a vital service brian, get with the 21st century, its nothing against anyone in africa, i totally support development of water there etc but this is 21st century britain for god sake, stop comparing us to them, its not right, we deserve to have good broadband
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im glad about this it will allow me to do more online like shopping (if they will deliver) but the concern there is that this may compete against small rural shops and actually hurt them
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good.
please can you prioritise harley bank and sheinton please.
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lets just hope the powers that be at the council dont get more into debt to deliver this project
they seem addicted to outsourcing services on an ideological basis even when it costs more that runnning them in house and i can see them borrowing the money off BT for alot of this project or doing it through PFI or some other dodgy accounting
meanwhile all the experts say PFI is a bad idea which costs more than neccessary
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/aug/19/private-finance-initiative-costly-drug
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happy days
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nice one
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