Andrew and local campaigners calling for better, faster broadband for Burton

Too many people and businesses in Burton have had to put up with extremely slow and unreliable internet connections - if they can get a connection at all.

This isn't only an inconvenience for residents, it also holds back local businesses. Companies have decided not to move to Burton because of the poor internet service and others have contacted Andrew to say that they are having to consider moving elsewhere because of it.

Andrew has been campaigning for action to upgrade the local telephone exchanges to fibre-optic conenctions, which would mean a huge increase in broadband speeds available. He helped to lead, with local local businessman Ian Page, Burton's campaign in the BT Infinity campaign, which attracted more than 1,000 supporters.

He has raised this issue with BT and in Parliament and visited Burton telephone exchange to see the work being done to allow more people in the town to have access to fast broadband connections.

On 14th June, BT announced that Burton upon Trent was being added to the next phase of upgrades, which will mean that the telephone exchange will be upgraded to fibre-optic connections by the end of 2012. This will allow for 40 Megabit per second download speeds and BT say this will be doubled soon afterwards.