Thousands more homes and businesses in Shropshire are poised to benefit from super-fast broadband as part of a major roll-out by BT.

Wellington’s exchange is among the latest to be included in the company’s £2.5 billion roll-out of fibre-optic broadband. It will take the number of county homes and businesses being passed by the new super-fast network to more than 82,000 users, including those in Donnington.

Donnington has just become the first community in the county to ‘go live’, benefiting more than 6,700 people.

The latest upgrades are due to be completed during 2012.

BT’s local network business Openreach is driving forward plans to make super-fast fibre-optic broadband is available to two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2014.

Speeds are vastly superior to those previously available to many UK homes and businesses.

John Dovey, BT’s regional director for the West Midlands, said: “This latest major investment is a tremendous boost for Shropshire.

“Super-fast broadband will be welcomed by families throughout the area because it will help improve their quality of life and leisure and open new doors through online learning and fast access to information and services.

“And it’s also going to provide a huge fillip for businesses and the Shropshire economy,” he said.

“At a stroke, small and medium sized firms will have access to big business speeds at much lower costs allowing them to find new markets, boost their competitiveness and create new jobs. Faster upstream speeds are a boon for flexible and remote working, slashing office overheads and improving employees’ work-life balance.”

Mr Dovey added: “Large graphic and video files can be sent immediately online instead of being physically delivered to customers on hard disk.

“And high quality voice and video calls will enable businesses to save time travelling to clients without losing direct customer contact.

“We are making rapid progress with super-fast broadband across the UK. More than six million homes and businesses can now access the high-speed technology and last month we announced that two-thirds of UK premises will have access by the end of 2014.

“And we’re not forgetting the final third – largely rural areas which we have always said will require a partnership approach with the public sector.”

See also:

• Rural Shropshire struggles on slow broadband
• Downloads take forever – 007 Daniel Craig’s father
• £8.2m to speed up broadband in county