Shropshire Star

Shropshire homes connected to superfast broadband 'must now upgrade'

Only one in five Shropshire homes are making use of superfast broadband, despite tens of thousands now being able to get it.

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Residents and businesses are being urged to check if they can upgrade, and warned that faster internet speeds will not happen automatically.

Connecting Shropshire, the organisation working to overhaul the county's communications infrastructure, has laid 770,000 metres, or about 450 miles, of fibre-optic cables and is set to connect 60,000 premises before the current phase of work draws to an end.

Now about two thirds of the way through that phase, bosses are calling on those connected to do their part and contact their internet provider to make the switch, or they will not benefit from the cutting edge technology.

Steve Charmley, Shropshire Council Cabinet member responsible for broadband, said: "Around 43,000 homes and businesses have access to fibre broadband from the new fibre network built by Connecting Shropshire but, to date, only about 20 per cent of these have made the switch to fibre broadband.

"This is partly because people assume that, when fibre broadband becomes available in their area, they'll automatically get faster speeds. That's not the case."

He said internet users had to take actionby signing up to a package that gave them superfast speeds – and it is not necessarily more expensive, in fact could even be cheaper, than paying for a non-superfast service from an internet provider.

A fibre broadband internet connection gives both faster download and upload speeds for files and data which could be critically important to some businesses, he said, and provides a more reliable connection that more people in one home could use at the same time, whether video calling friends in other countries, or streaming a programme on TV shows or online gaming.

"In short, it makes things in life more easily accessible and opens up a whole range of possibilities that may not have been available to you, your family or your business before," he said.

Those interested in upgrading can check if fibre broadband is available to their property by checking online at connectingshropshire.co.uk/when-and-where.

If fibre broadband is available, Connecting Shropshire – a partnership between Shropshire Council, BT and the government's BDUK campaign – advises users to shop around for the best package by using a comparison website such as www.cable.co.uk/connectingshropshire and then need contacting a chosen provider to make the switch.

Updates to see which areas are scheduled to be connected are available at connectingshropshire.co.uk

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