Faster broadband is to roll out in Shrewsbury

Almost 30,000 homes and businesses in Shrewsbury will get access to super-fast broadband over the next few weeks as BT rolls its coverage out across the town, the company said today.

The telecommunications giant has begun its roll-out of the faster broadband in the town, with engineers beginning to upgrade the network this week. It is the second area of the county to benefit.

BT undertook work to boost Donnington in Telford last year.

The latest upgrade will take the number of homes in the county with access to the high-speed technology to more than 36,000.

BT has already announced plans to expand its super-fast network across the county, with a further 37,000 properties in Baschurch, Dawley, Newport, Stirchley and Wellington due to have the internet upgrade in 2012.

In Shrewsbury BT will use a mixture of fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) and fibre to the premises technologies (FTTP).

Properties served by FTTC will get download speeds of up to 40Mbps, which will be doubled this spring, while those served by FTTP will received download speeds of up to 100Mbps, which will be boosted to up to 300Mbps later this year.

John Dovey, BT’s West Midlands regional director, said: “Fast and reliable internet connections are an essential part of our national infrastructure, whether we want them for boosting our businesses, delivering essential public services, education online or entertainment at home. Nobody is doing more than BT to roll-out faster broadband across the region and we want to go further.”

According to an Ofcom report last year, Shropshire has one of the worst rates of superfast broadband availability in the country.

Average availability level across England last year was 61 per cent, but only three per cent in the county.

See also:

• More Shropshire homes now on faster broadband
• 16,000 Shropshire homes to get superfast broadband
• Claim Shropshire has two-tier internet speeds