Derbyshire County Council have announced that BT will be the supplier (from a choice of precisely one) to provide faster broadband to the county.

“A £27.67 million project to transform broadband speeds for thousands more businesses and residents across Derbyshire was announced today.

Derbyshire County Council, which has spearheaded the Digital Derbyshire programme, has signed a contract with BT to make fibre broadband available to a further 88,000 premises across the county, bringing access to more than 95 per cent of homes and businesses by 2016. The project builds on BT’s existing commercial fibre deployment in the county.

The project aims to ensure that the remaining premises will also see an uplift in speed and deliver a minimum of 2Mbps or more to almost all homes and businesses, fast enough to use online services such as BBC iPlayer.”

2Mbps…BBC iPlayer? Seriously? The villages that are in the 5% left behind by this project don’t want to watch iPlayer, they want a fast and reliable internet connection that will allow home working, small businesses to thrive, and most importantly not to fall deeper into the digital divide! Whilst 2Mbps might have been adequate a few years ago, the current average UK broadband speed is 14.7Mbps (9.9MBps in rural areas), and is increasing by almost 2Mbps per year.

It remains to be seen if Sheldon will actually benefit from this project; the latest roll out map seems to suggest that it will…with caveats. The simple fact is that this project is a sad reflection on the failings of BT to provide its customers what they pay for, and the lack of regulation by the Government to ensure that they are held accountable.