More rural homes promised faster broadband as minister visits remote south Shropshire telephone exchange
The government says rural Shropshire won’t be left behind as it steps up work to deliver fast, reliable broadband to thousands of homes and businesses.
A telephone exchange deep in rural south Shropshire - accessed only by a series of increasingly narrow and partially flooded country lanes pockmarked by potholes - was the unlikely location chosen for a ministerial visit this week.
On Thursday afternoon, this blink-and-you'll-miss-it shed off a C-road near Stottesdon (between Cleobury Mortimer and Bridgnorth), played host to the government's 'Broadband Minister', Liz Lloyd.
She was there to meet with the Openreach engineering teams working as part of Project Gigabit - a government-funded programme to enable communities to access fast and reliable broadband.
The government expects 99 per cent of homes and businesses will have access to a "lightning-fast gigabit-capable broadband connection" by 2032.
For those already accustomed to high-speed internet at home, it may not seem like delivering a Netflix service without buffering should be a priority for the government.
But for thousands of rural Shropshire homes and businesses, a slow internet connection is leaving them more and more isolated from the modern world - unable to work from home, video call or access essential services like internet banking or increasingly online doctors' appointments.
