FASTER broadband is now available to a further 6,500 homes and businesses in Lincolnshire, BT announced yesterday.
Kirton, Heckington and Long Bennington are the latest communities to benefit from upgrades as part of the roll-out of BT’s next generation broadband service delivered over copper lines.
The investment will make available download speeds of up to 20 megabits per second (Mbps) – more than double the fastest speed previously available from BT.
By next spring around 88 per cent of homes and businesses in the region will be served by an exchange which has been upgraded to deliver these higher speeds.
Paul Bimson, BT’s East Midlands regional partnership director, said: “BT is committed to making the technology available to as many homes and businesses as possible, as quickly as possible.
“Around 82 per cent of East Midlands homes and businesses now have access to faster broadband and within less than a year we expect this will have increased to nearly nine out of ten premises in this region.
“But there is still much work to be done and we want to work with local authorities to find ways of getting to even the most challenging locations.”
This investment in the copper network is in addition to BT’s £2.5billion roll-out of fibre-based broadband, which will bring even faster speeds to around two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2014.
Fibre-based broadband will be available to around 173,500 homes and businesses in Lincolnshire by the end of 2013.