Popular Cotswolds town is brought up to speed by Fastershire fibre broadband roll-out

More than 2,400 homes and businesses in Wotton-under-Edge are now able to get faster fibre broadband, thanks to the Fastershire roll-out, Gloucestershire County Council and BT confirmed today.

However, the Fastershire engineering teams had to overcome a series of challenges before completing the work in the picturesque Cotswolds market town.

Engineers from Openreach – BT’s local network business – replaced 200 metres of underground ducting, laid more than one kilometre of fibre optic cable and installed seven new road-side fibre cabinets in and around the town centre. Special arrangements were made with the county council’s highways department enabling most of the work to be carried out overnight to prevent traffic jams.

Matt Lloyd, BT’s project manager for Fastershire, said: “Rolling out faster fibre broadband in Gloucestershire is a huge and often complex engineering operation. The unusual challenges we faced when trying to complete the upgrade of Wotton-under-Edge is a good example of everyone’s commitment and determination to get the job done, while keeping disruption to local residents, shoppers, motorists and visitors to an absolute minimum.”

Councillor Mark Hawthorne, leader of Gloucestershire County Council, said: “We look forward to making fibre broadband more widely available in Wotton-under-Edge over the next few weeks. The Fastershire project, with our partners BT, is providing access to download speeds of over 30Mbps in Gloucestershire.”

Residents and businesses can follow the progress of the roll-out via the Fastershire website: www.fastershire.com, Fastershire’s Facebook page: facebook.com/Fastershire or on twitter: @Fastershire.

Upgrades do not happen automatically. Once an area has ‘gone live’ with fibre, local people are able to place an order with an internet service provider of their choice to get download speeds of up to 80 megabits (Mbps) and upload speeds of up to 20Mbps*. More than 140 companies offering fibre broadband services are now operating in the UK.

Notes to Editors

* These are the top wholesale speeds available from Openreach to all service providers; speeds offered by service providers may vary.

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Issued by Gloucestershire County Council and BT on behalf of Fastershire.

For more information please contact Gloucestershire County Council’s Media Team on 01452 425226 or email pressoff@gloucestershire.gov.uk

Or

Emma Tennant at the BT regional press office on 0800 085 0660 or email: emma.tennant@bt.com Twitter: @EmmaTennantBT

About Fastershire

Fastershire is the project established by a partnership between Gloucestershire County Council, Herefordshire Council and the private sector to provide faster broadband in hard to reach areas of both counties. It uses funding from a range of European, central and local government funding sources to match private sector funds and deliver the infrastructure required to increase the availability of faster broadband.

The first phase of Fastershire, delivered in partnership with BT, is a £56.6m project to increase the availability of faster fibre broadband to around 90 per cent of Gloucestershire homes and businesses by the end of 2016.

Superfast Britain is a Government programme of investment in broadband and communication infrastructure across the UK. Run by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, this investment helps businesses to grow, creates jobs and will make Britain more competitive in the global race. The portfolio is comprised of three elements:

* £780m to extend superfast broadband to 95% of the UK by 2017

* £150m to provide high speed broadband to businesses in 22 cities

* £150m to improve quality and coverage of mobile phone and basic data network services

Administered on behalf of Government by Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK), Superfast Britain is transforming Britain by promoting growth, enabling skills and learning, and improving quality of life. For further information: https://www.gov.uk/broadband-delivery-uk

About BT

BT’s purpose is to use the power of communications to make a better world. It is one of the world’s leading providers of communications services and solutions, serving customers in more than 170 countries. Its principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to its customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband, TV and internet products and services; and converged fixed/mobile products and services. BT consists principally of five customer-facing lines of business: BT Global Services, BT Business, BT Consumer, BT Wholesale and Openreach.

For the year ended 31 March 2015, BT Group’s reported revenue was £17,979mwith reported profit before taxation of £2,645m.

British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York.

For more information, visit www.btplc.com

All news releases can be accessed at our web site: http://www.btplc.com/News