COUNCIL WELCOMES BROADBAND ROLLOUT ANNOUNCEMENT

Herefordshire Council has welcomed recent announcements from BT which suggest that more than 90% of businesses and households in the county will be able to receive Broadband services by the end of next summer.

After hearing the news, Cllr June French, Cabinet Member (Human Resources and Corporate Support Services), said: “This is excellent news for Herefordshire; it will allow our businesses to compete worldwide and provide households with better access to information and services”

Back in April BT announced that, due in part to the success of the “We Want Broadband” Campaign, it would suspend the Broadband registration campaign and upgrade 38 Herefordshire telephone exchanges for Broadband, bringing the total to 49. They have now followed up this announcement by providing firm dates for this programme.

Engineering work is scheduled to commence in October with the first exchanges going live in December and is due to be completed by the end of July 2005. Further details can be found on the campaign website www.wewantbroadband.org

This is a boost to the “We Want Broadband” campaign, which has received more than 5,000 registrations since its launch January.

The Head of Council ICT Services, Julie Holmes, also welcomed the news but pointed out that this will still leave five exchanges without a service and that there are likely to be pockets within upgraded areas that are still out of range.

“It remains the aim of the Broadband project to ensure that Broadband is available to all parts of the county and the project will continue to work towards this goal.”

The current BT rollout dates are provided below

Enquires to info@wewantbroadband.org