Broadband Provision in Wiltshire October 2010 Maggie Rae, Director of Public Health and Wellbeing, County Hall, Trowbridge, Wiltshire BA14 8JD Report Author: Dr Sally Hunter Corporate Research Team Wiltshire Council
[email protected] Executive summary Introduction and background Digital technology is at the heart of today’s society, with the significance of internet access for a wide range of social, economic, educational and civic purposes continuously increasing. All telephone exchanges in Wiltshire are enabled to provide a broadband internet service, but the broadband speeds attainable vary widely throughout the county. Contrasts in the quality and speed of broadband provision are a national issue and two central government programmes – the Universal Service Commitment (USC) and Final Third – have been established to ensure, respectively, provision of speeds of at least 2mbps1 in the shorter term and access to ‘next generation’, super-fast broadband services in areas the market would not reach (the ‘final third’ of the country) in the longer term. Broadband Delivery UK has been established within the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills as the delivery vehicle for these programmes. This research project has been carried out to provide an evidence base describing broadband provision in Wiltshire, with particular reference to the USC and Final Third programmes. Exchanges providing broadband services in Wiltshire There are 106 exchanges providing broadband services in Wiltshire, 85 located within the county and 21 located outside and providing services to areas around the county boundary. The numbers of premises served by each exchange and the services offered vary widely, with exchanges in urban areas serving greater numbers of premises and generally offering more services.