Broadband milestone for Telford

Twice as many people are reaping the benefits of the Superfast Telford roll-out of fibre broadband compared with just six months ago, lead partners Telford & Wrekin Council and BT revealed.

The percentage of households and businesses choosing an upgrade has jumped from 10 per cent to more than 20 per cent since September – and the number is continuing to grow rapidly.

More than 3,000 premises across the borough are now able to access superfast fibre broadband as a result of Superfast Telford, which is part of the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme.

Areas of the borough to benefit recently include parts of Lightmoor, Ironbridge, Tibberton, Stirchley, Aqueduct and Lawley.

Councillor Angela McClements, Telford & Wrekin Council’s cabinet member for Customer and Neighbourhood Services, said: “Making fibre broadband available to 3,000 households and businesses is a major achievement for the Superfast Telford programme, but we’re keen for even more local people to benefit.

"Our project teams are working hard to make it available to more parts of the borough, as quickly as possible. And in areas where it is already ‘live’, I would encourage people to take advantage of this fantastic technology. There’s lots of useful information on the Superfast Telford website.”

It is around 15 months since engineers from Openreach – the local network business, which is part of BT Group - started to connect the first households and businesses to the Superfast Telford network.

By the end of 2017, around 9,300 households and businesses will have access to fibre broadband, with 8,800 of them able to get ‘superfast’ download speeds of 24 megabits per second (Mbps) and above.