South Gloucestershire and Wiltshire to launch high-speed broadband service

The Broadband Delivery UK program was established to provide universal broadband access all through the United Kingdom. The minimum speed that is targeted is 2Mbps. Aside from this, the government is hoping to bring next-generation broadband to at least ninety percent of the UK by the year 2015.

The Minister for Digital Britain, Stephen Timms, said that meeting these broadband targets were essential to the growth of the country’s economy. He stated: “Taking advantage of new technologies like next generation broadband is vital to the growth of the UK’s economy and it’s important that all homes and businesses can access the opportunities faster speeds bring.”

Through the program, the government has defined superfast broadband as “having a potential headline access speed of at least 20Mb, with no upper limit.”

Now the local councils in South Gloucestershire and Wiltshire have joined together to push for high-speed broadband access in the area. The collaboration will have the respective councils from South Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Swindon work together to sign up a commercial broadband service provider.

The South Gloucestershire Council has said that the partnership will “enable significant savings in project costs.” The spokesperson also revealed the councils’ hopes that more bidders would be attracted, due to the larger area of the project.

South Gloucestershire Council’s executive member for corporate affairs, John Goddard, stated: “This is extremely exciting news for the council and for all the businesses and households in the district who to date have been unable to get high-speed broadband from a commercial provider.”

Source – BBC