WARRINGTON and two other Cheshire councils have welcomed a £3.24 million boost to help deliver superfast broadband across the county.
Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester and Warrington Borough councils’ share of the £362m pot to improve internet connections in rural parts of England and Scotland has been announced by Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
However, the three councils’ Cheshire and Warrington Superfast Broadband Project needs to raise up to £40m through additional public sector funding and investment to make the whole of Cheshire completely superfast broadband-enabled by 2015.
Cllr Hitesh Patel, (right) executive member for communications and personnel at Warrington said: “High-quality broadband is essential to thriving communities. Our aim is to ensure that all residents and businesses in the borough have access to a fast broadband connection and this funding will help us to achieve this goal.”
His Cheshire East counterpart, Cllr David Brown said: “We very much welcome the announcement, although £3.24m is not as high as we had anticipated.
“The team will continue to pursue other sources of funding to complement this sum with the aim of achieving £40m in total. We urge the public to help us connect Cheshire and Warrington by registering their demand for superfast broadband on the Connecting Cheshire website.”
It has been estimated that providing superfast broadband across the county could support the creation of 5,500 jobs in Cheshire and Warrington and add £197m in growth to the local economy year on year.
To register support for superfast broadband in Cheshire and Warrington, visit www.connectingcheshire.org.uk or email [email protected]
Councils welcome £3.24m broadband boost
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Gary Skentelbery
Experienced journalist for more than 40 years. Managing Director of magazine publishing group with three in-house titles and on-line daily newspaper for Warrington. Experienced writer, photographer, PR consultant and media expert having written for local, regional and national newspapers. Specialties: PR, media, social networking, photographer, networking, advertising, sales, media crisis management. Chair of Warrington Healthwatch Director Warrington Chamber of Commerce Patron Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Foundation for Peace. Trustee Warrington Disability Partnership. Former Chairman of Warrington Town FC.
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I hope that this means that finally Blacon (in Chester) will see some semi-decent internet speeds. 1 – 2 mb on an 8mb line is just not up to scratch, even if we are 3 miles from the exchange!
I live in Westbrook and our internet sppeds (and that of Callands) can be as low as 512k! Even vietnam has a better speed rollout than us…..We are still not on the list for the BT Rollout for fibre yet areas of the town which already have fibre via Virgin are….damned stupid if you ask me and about time these councillors spoke up and challenged BT to provide a service to areas that don’t already have it rather than duplicate it in areas already benefiting from fibre optic broadband