Surrey superfast broadband plans hailed world-leading (From Redhill And Reigate Life)
Got a story? Call 01273 544544 or email editorial@lifenewspapers.co.uk
Surrey superfast broadband plans hailed world-leading
8:15pm Monday 4th March 2013 in News
Surrey County Council’s superfast broadband plans have been hailed as world-leading. BT’s managing director of Next Generation Access, Bill Murphy, said the council was blazing an international trail.
The council is aiming to ensure virtually 100% access to superfast broadband before the end of next year. The national aim is for 90% of the country to have a high-quality service by 2015.
Mr Murphy said: “I don’t think you’ll find anyone else in the world with those type of numbers.”
His praise came at an event to mark the launch of a website to keep businesses and households up to date with Surrey’s superfast broadband roll-out details: www.superfastsurrey.org.uk Surrey County Council’s deputy leader, Peter Martin, said: “To ensure more of our businesses have access to superfast broadband is essential to the continued strength, the continued dynamism and the continued growth of Surrey.”
Last September, the county council chose BT to create a high-speed network. The deal will ensure the county council achieves its aim of providing superfast broadband for up to 20% of businesses and homes – more than 80,000 premises – not included in any commercial roll-out nationally.
At the website launch event, the county council and BT announced that around 15,000 homes and businesses will get access to the high speed service by the end of September.
These will be served by 14 new exchanges, including Betchworth, Oxted and South Godstone, as well as other exchanges previously announced.
It has been claimed that Surrey’s roll-out of high-speed broadband could boost the local economy by as much as £28 million a year, and “fibre-to-the-cabinet” (FTTC), where fibre is delivered to new street cabinets, much closer to premises and giving a greater likelihood of achieving faster upload and download speeds, offers download speeds of up to 80Mbps and upload speeds of up to 20Mbps.
From this spring, BT will also start to roll out its ultra-fast fibre on demand service with speeds of up to 330Mbps available in areas enabled with fibre broadband. According to Ofcom, the national average download speed is around 9Mbps.
