To see how Superfast broadband compares to standard broadband try out the FibreSpeed Tool developed by FTTH Council Europe.
Grow your business and see what opportunities superfast broadband can offer your business.
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Central Governments Ambition
 The Government has set out its ambition for the UK to have ‘the best Superfast broadband network in Europe by 2015’ & made available £530m capital funding up until 2015 to enable this, managed by Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK).
It is accepted that the telecoms market alone will not deliver to the ‘final third’ of the UK population – essentially because the high cost of rural deployments do not provide the market with a sufficient revenue to pay back their investment.
In Somerset 47% of businesses & residents fall within the final third – that’s 113,053 business & residential premises.
We expect the telecoms market to deliver Superfast broadband without intervention to 53% of our population based in our major towns, but we'll be looking to bring forward the time at which this investment happens. One way that you can help is to via our demand registration survey. If we can show a high level of demand we may be able to have them speed up their deployment plans.
The Government’s funding will ensure that rural areas, like much of Somerset, can access superfast broadband at the same time as urban areas. To unlock the growth potential of our economy & to support rural inclusion we therefore need to bid for Government funding & leverage private investment to deliver a Superfast broadband network across the whole of the County.
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Superfast broadband will transform the opportunities for Somerset businesses, helping the private sector access new markets, work in new ways, and attract new companies into Somerset. Ultimately it will help us safeguard jobs and create more jobs, in particular in high growth and high value sectors.
 It has the potential to transform access for rural communities, be it new ways of delivering higher & further education, changing the way health & social care can help support people to stay in their own homes for longer, and help the public sector be more efficient in what it does. It can also help us become a greener economy, enabling people to work remotely & from home much more easily.
Somerset County Council will be presenting a multi million pound bid to BDUK in mid April 2011. You can support this bid by completing our demand registration survey.
More information & support material will be added to this site over the coming weeks and months
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Connecting Somerset has conducted extensive research into the current connectivity speeds available to businesses and residents throughout the whole county, which provides us with the baseline data to measure progress against.
Our analysis suggests that the current average download speed in the County is around 3mbps (compared to a UK average of 5mbps), but that the speeds businesses and consumers experience are likely to be in reality slower than this, especially at times of high demand.
Around 21% of premises in Somerset cannot even access speeds of 2mbps. Survey evidence demonstrates that this is a barrier to business growth, particularly small and medium sized businesses and those in rural areas, and that it is a key constraint on companies considering locating in Somerset. Current broadband speeds mean that rural communities do not have the same access to services as those living in urban areas.
The findings of our research have enabled us to create a connectivity map for Somerset that shows areas of good and poor connectivity.
You can learn more about the issues that affect connectivity speeds in the FAQ section.
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