Superfast Shropshire broadband pledge by BT bosses

A contract worth almost £25 million was signed between Shropshire Council and the telecoms giant in Shrewsbury yesterday to bring high-speed internet to more than 130,000 homes and businesses in the county within the next three years.

Bill Murphy, managing director of next generation access for BT, said work would now be taking place to identify which areas to roll the broadband out to first, with construction scheduled to get started by the end of the year.

He said the first superfast services for the county, offering speeds of up to 80 mega bits per second (Mbps), should go live in spring 2014.

Under the terms of the deal, high-speed fibre broadband is set to become available to 93 per cent of Shropshire's more than 140,000 homes and businesses within the next three years.

Faster internet would bring benefits to companies and householders, such as those wanting to watch films over the internet.

Mr Murphy said he hoped it would also be possible to provide the technology to the remaining seven per cent of the county which is due to miss out.

He said: "We will work tirelessly to get as far as we can. In Cornwall, we thought we could only do 84 per cent but now we are up to 95 per cent."

Under the terms of the deal, all premises will receive a minimum of 2Mbps.

At the moment, more than 70,000 properties in the county have no access to speeds of more than 24Mbps, with almost 4,000 unable to get speeds of even 2Mbps.

Mr Murphy said: "People should start seeing a six to eight times improvement in speed."

The £24.64m package will see BT contribute £8.6m towards the roll-out, with £8.2m coming from Shropshire Council and a further £7.84m provided through the Government's Broadband Delivery UK funds.