Shropshire residents still left without any broadband
After more than six years of campaigning, a number of residents of a Shropshire village still don't have access to broadband - despite Shropshire Council installing the service.
Parish councillor Roy Tydeman has been fighting to get fibre optic broadband installed in Adderley, near Market Drayton.
The majority of the village's 100-plus premises can now access superfast broadband speeds of 24 megabits per second (Mbps) or above, and the average download speed has increased from 0.45Mbps to nearly 59Mbps.
The scheme is being delivered by Connecting Shropshire partners, Shropshire Council and BT.
But Mr Tydeman, his wife Jackie and neighbours, who live just outside Adderley, have still not been connected.
Mrs Tydeman said: "We were in line for fibre optic broadband before Christmas and applied to BT to be connected.
"We were originally told they would come on January 12 but then they cancelled that and rearranged to come back on January 22 due to a problem.
"We had letters and texts in the meanwhile congratulating us on being connected - even though we were not.
"We have now been sent two hubs - and neither are up and running. We were then told January 28 and despite 11 engineers now coming out we still have no internet.
"We are getting nowhere fast.
"We have never had the internet before but I wanted it after Christmas.
"I wanted to Skype my grandson as he lives in Lincoln which is a long way away. I thought it would be nice to get the internet to speak to him.
"We are getting very frustrated now and so are our neighbours."
Mrs Tydeman said there were about six other houses in the area that still were not connected.
She added: "One of our neighbours are farmers and use the internet for all types of farm business - they also cannot get connected.
"It is really dragging on now and we want it sorted as soon as possible."
Chris Taylor, programme manager of Connecting Shropshire Programme, said: "Prior to Christmas, Connecting Shropshire announced that the cabinet in Adderley would be connected to the new fibre network.
"Projections showed that the vast majority of the 100-plus premises served by the cabinet would get speeds of 24 megabits per second (Mbps) or above.
"Indeed the village have embraced this positive development with 40 per cent signing up for faster speeds of up to 80Mbps
"As with all cabinets that the programme builds, some premises may be too distant from the fibre network to get benefit of improved broadband speeds. Mr Tydeman's line is unfortunately not routed through the upgraded cabinet, which it had been at one time, and this is something we are looking into."
