The telecom giant BT Retail has announced six towns in the UK as winners in the recently concluded Race to Infinity campaign.
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The three-month competition which started on 4th October 2010, is intended to bring superfast broadband to the rural areas of the UK that have shown the highest demand.
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The competition winners are:
- Whitchurch in Hampshire
- Caxton in Cambridgeshire
- Madingley in Cambridgeshire
- Innerleithen in the Scottish Borders
- Blewbury in Oxfordshire
- Baschurch in Shropshire
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The competition was initially intended to provide upgrades to five exchanges, but this was increased to six, following the overwhelming response from the communities served by the 6 exchanges.
Each community needed to register at least 1,000 votes to be eligible with each area ranked as a percentage by the amount of votes compared to the number of premises/addresses in the area.
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Gavin Patterson, the chief executive of the company, said:
“We’ve been so impressed by the passion and commitment of the people who signed up to campaign for their areas up and down the country.
“They’ve done a brilliant job and we’d like to thank them for their time and dedication and of course all the thousands of people all over the UK who have voted.”
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He added that the runners-up would have some influence on future plans for the roll-out of superfast broadband.
In total, more than 360,000 votes had been cast, reflecting the strong demand for superfast broadband across the rural areas in the UK, that are not currently in BTs roll out plan.
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BT said the winning exchanges would have the new service up and running by early 2012.
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