Top officials from BT have visited Ceredigion to outline progress on delivering Superfast fibre broadband to the county, and to take questions from the public.

BT Director for Wales, Ann Beynon, together with Ed Hunt who leads the Superfast Cymru broadband project, and Steve Jones from Openreach, attended the meeting at the invitation of the local Plaid Cymru AM Elin Jones, a long-standing campaigner for better internet access for Ceredigion.

BT announced that 10,700 properties out of 35,000 were now verified as being able to access the new Superfast broadband, which delivers internet speeds several times faster than the old copper-cable-only connection.

Superfast representatives also fielded questions from invited guests; representatives of farming unions, businesses and community organisations which are campaigning for better broadband in areas right across Ceredigion.

Elin Jones said: “I’m pleased to see that the Superfast programme is making rapid progress in many areas, despite the engineering challenges posed by a project of this scale. But I was also anxious to ensure that some of the concerns that people have, such as a lack of information about when the new system will be available and what the situation is with communities which are a long way from exchanges, were able to be discussed.

“It’s hard to overstate how important this investment is to Ceredigion. The latest broadband infrastructure is vital for businesses, and increasingly for a whole range of leisure uses and communications from banking to filling in government forms. We mustn’t allow this county to be left behind.

“It was great to hear plans to extend coverage to some areas which have suffered from poor broadband because they’re too far from the exchange, through new technology such as supplying fibre direct to the premises.

“I look forward to seeing further rapid progress over the next few months.”