Posted: 29th Mar, 2011 By: MarkJ

The UK government's minister (MP) for
Mid-Worcestershire, Peter Luff (aka - the Minister for Defence Equipment, Support and Technology), has written to every parish and town council in his constituency and urged them to support a future bid for
superfast broadband ISP services in the county.
At present
99% of Mid-Worcestershire constituents are connected to a broadband telephone exchange, with
Droitwich,
Evesham and
Fernhill Heath exchanges due to get faster (up to 40Mbps FTTC) services from BT in the near future.
However, Luff notes that large areas of rural Mid-Worcestershire will not, under the current plans, have early access to superfast broadband.
MP Peter Luff wrote:
"The good news is that the government has established a £530m fund in this parliament, with additional sums in the next parliament, to pay for the installation of affordable high speed broadband roll out to rural areas through an organisation known as Broadband Delivery UK.
BT has been in active discussion with Worcestershire County Council and the Local Enterprise Partnership about the development of a bid to Broadband Delivery UK for money to pay for the roll out of superfast broadband using this allocation.
I have already encouraged the County Council to work constructively with BT and it would appear that BT was confident that a bid from Worcestershire could well succeed.
The purpose of this letter is to encourage your council to contact its district and county councillors and to draw to their attention the need to ensure that a good, robust and effective bid is made. I am confident that if Worcestershire acts in unison it should be possible to secure a revolution in broadband coverage."
To date the
Worcestershire County Council (WCC) has been ever so slightly quieter than some of their neighbours on the subject of superfast broadband provision and it's hoped that the new call to arms will rouse them into action.