BT Promotes VoIP in Rural Britain


British Telecom will promote VoIP in rural Britain by giving six communities access to high-speed broadband.

The move follows a BT competition to see which parts of the country were most desperate to have excellent internet access.

That is in turn part of a wider UK government initiative to allow all parts of the United Kingdom to have broadband.

Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt has said that he wants to deliver high-speed broadband to rural areas by 2015.

The idea is to give a boost to small and medium-sized country businesses which would benefit from using the Internet and services such as voiceover internet protocol. The scheme will even receive funding from the television licence fee.

The six communities are Baschurch in Shropshire, Whitchurch in Hampshire, Blewbury in Oxfordshire, Madingley in Cambridgeshire, Innerleithen in Tweeddale and Caxton in Cambridgeshire.

Originally it was only planned to offer broadband to five communities but the scheme was incredibly popular so BT increased it to six.

They will each get a superfast broadband hub with download speeds of up to 40 megabits per second by the beginning of 2012.

Campaign co-ordinator for the Blewbury exchange, Chris Whatmore, said: “With proper, future-proof broadband, Blewbury can attract people or businesses that need and depend on high-speed data connectivity and VoIP.”

Two of the companies looking at UK broadband access opportunities are BT and Virgin Media.

They are testing in which areas of the country it is practical to lay down fibre optic cables.

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