Labour MSP Mark Griffin has vowed to meet with BT in a bid to ensure that Cumbernauld residents with poor broadband connectivity benefit from the telecoms giant's latest round of infrastructure improvements.

Connection speeds will potentially double for 16,670 homes and businesses across the town when BT carries out the work, which is expected to finish by next March.

The upgrade comes as part of the company's plan to deliver fibre optic broadband to two-thirds of UK properties by the end of 2014, a year earlier than its original deadline.

Welcoming the news, Central Scotland representative Mr Griffin expressed his delight at BT's decision to invest in Cumbernauld, but stressed it is "ridiculous" that such broadband problems exist in a town of its size, reports the Cumbernauld News.

BT is still ironing out the precise locations of the new super-fast broadband street cabinets, but the MSP said he is eager to have a say in the matter.

He explained: "I plan to meet with BT to ensure the areas with the poorest service benefit first.

"I have been given assurances that the 40 new street cabinets will ensure the majority of people in the area benefit from greater speeds and quality."

Brendan Dick, BT's director for Scotland, added the development is set to "significantly improve" the quality of broadband service in the town, as well as the other parts of the country that are benefiting from the upgrade work.

Last week, the company unveiled a helping hand for its Scottish fibre optic broadband rollout programme, with the news that 38 new engineers will be recruited.

Based in Fife, Tayside, Glasgow and Ayr, the employees will spend weeks undertaking intensive training and 'buddying up' with their more experienced colleagues, before properly starting out in their new jobs by the end of January.

Around 200,000 Scottish homes and businesses already have access to super-fast broadband.

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Comments (12)

11th November 2012

I see for the broadband has been delayed yet again for certain parts of Craigmarloch which include my address. This is the4th time it has been put back and is now a year behind when it was due for completion. Are our MSP councillors bothering with this, was it just all talk as usual??

21st August 2012

Well maybe some good news for once. Drove past the cabinet at the bottom of Black wood road this evening and a shiney new cabinet has appeared next to the existing. Fingers crossed for those of us in Black wood. BT obviously focused on those areas where there was an existing market (existing virgin customers). Wrote to Mr Griffen on a number of occasions but got no response. Obviously only interested in gaining headlines, unlike Cathy Craigie who took a real interest in her constituency.

25th July 2012

The exchange has been upgraded, I called BT only to find this wasn't the end of it, we have to wait on the cabinets. What was the point of the fanfare for the exchange. When can we expect to get the cabinets in place.Why didn't they put these up when they were laying the cables? My friend just got upgraded to 60MB, but I'm luck to get 1M in Blackwood.

21st July 2012

The internet speeds here at Craigmarloch are shocking. When is this going to be updated ??

21st July 2012

Great! Supposedly the Dullatur cabinet isn't included in the upgrade so I have been told. And I can assure you council tax here is much more expensive than Carbrain!!!!!! ABSOLUTELY SHOCKING. This is such a joke. I think most of us would pay lots of money to have some form of quick internet and BT chooses to ignore us much like our MSP who many residents have wrote to.

26th June 2012

Some parts of Carrickstone able to order, others not. Maybe they're rolling it out slowly as it needs an engineers visit.

24th June 2012

Well it's nearly July here in Blackwood.......still stuck with this crap BT Broadband. Infinity doesn't look like it's coming anytime soon. It's is 2012 is it not?

18th May 2012

You can now order BT Infinity from Craigmarloch postcodes but not Blackwood (me)...surely they aren't going to provide for some areas and not others?!

25th February 2012

I live in Blackwood and agree, the speed it absolutely terrible. It seems- Without being unfair that the old part of the town...i.e..Village, Kildrum, Abronhill and Carbrain can benefit from this soon and these houses also have the option of Virgin media. The newer side of the town- I.e... The opposite side of the M80, where I dare say there is a higher proportion of internet users cant get above 1mb. To be absolutely fair- If they doubled my speed I would still be gutted. It needs to be somewhere 20mb or above. My 3g on my ipad is about 4 times faster than my broadband.

02nd February 2012

I have noticed that bt have taken off there website the opportunity to order infinity from my mothers and mother in laws Cumbernauld phone number. I wonder if there won't be infinity available in June after all. Would be a big let down

21st January 2012

I live in Dullatur. The FASTEST speed is 60-70 Kbps. Yes that is 60-70kbps. I really hope something is done in our area. There are a lot of residents here. Everywhere I go has much faster Internet. It is the 21st century and we live in modern Britain. Yet the government and BT will probably improve broadband speed in Cumbernauld but not in areas such as Dullatur. Please please help us. I am a student and can't really study at home because of the slow speed. You may as well put up a new signal booster near the area to be fair to everyone.

30th December 2011

I live in Eastfield, Cumbernauld and the best download speed I can get is 300kb/s which is shocking for this day and age. Really hope they do something about this soon.