MONMOUTH MP David Davies is urging local communities to make their voice heard and register demand for super fast fibre broadband.
BT has launched its UK-wide ‘Race to Infinity’ survey, which aims to indentify where consumer and business demand for high speed broadband technology is high. Furthermore, the survey is being run as a competition with the five exchanges with the highest demand being enabled by the start of 2012 at the latest.
BT Retail is promising to fund this initiative where necessary if the exchange area is outside Openreach’s commercial plans. Openreach is the part of the business responsible for deploying fibre across the country, making its network available to all communications providers to sell fibre broadband services to customers. BT aims to provide fibre broadband to 16million premises by 2015.
Mr Davies said: “Regrettably, Monmouthshire has been badly served by broadband to date and this is an issue of real importance locally.
“Indeed, many areas have no broadband at all let alone mobile phone reception. Monmouthshire is home to a thriving rural economy, with food and agri-businesses, online retailers, industrial manufacturers and farming and tourism businesses all desperate to exploit improved digital connectivity. Yet the lack of broadband communications is stifling their ability to grow and develop and, for many, superfast broadband roll-out remains a distant reality.
“I would therefore urge constituents to make their voices heard and register their demand for this new initiative”.
The Race to Infinity survey will run until early December 2010. BT will meet to discuss and explore all options with any community that gathers 75 per cent of possible votes for their exchange but doesn’t manage to get into the top five winners.
Register your demand at www.bt.com/racetoinfinity.