East Sussex County Council (ESCC) chiefs have met with the government to underline the importance of the area receiving investment for the deployment of super-fast broadband.

Leader of the local authority Peter Jones held talks with culture secretary Jeremy Hunt and representatives from Broadband Delivery UK to urge them to help prevent a digital divide opening up between East Sussex and more built-up parts of the country.

The high-level meeting took place as part of ESCC's plans to resolve the slow broadband speeds that affect large swathes of the county.

According to the local Observer newspaper, Hastings is poorly-served by internet connections, with average download capabilities in eight areas of the town falling short of the 2Mbps mark - a speed Mr Hunt has previously described as "not enough".

Embarrassingly for BT, one of the worst-affected parts of Hastings - Edinburgh Road - has been chosen as the site of the new St Leonards Academy school, which is being sponsored by the telecoms giant.

Speaking after the meeting, Mr Jones insisted the talks had been a success and that the culture secretary was left in "no doubt" about ESCC's desire to improve broadband speeds in the county.

"The rollout of super-fast broadband can provide an enormous boost to our economy," the council leader stated. "It will help businesses in our main towns and especially in our more remote, rural area where access to this technology is crucial.

"At every opportunity we will lobby government on this issue."

BT recently unveiled 156 exchange areas across the UK that are due to be upgraded to fibre optic broadband by the end of 2012, but only one part of East Sussex - Brighton Portslade - was included in the rollout programme.

The company's fibre-to-the-cabinet service is capable of delivering download speeds of up to 40Mbps.

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24th August 2009

its a shame the worlds OEM's cant be bothered to integrate "bonded" wireless channels for all cheap wireless SOHO routers. as we might then see real (microwave) wireless 1gigE in the home and local community Mesh taking off. people dont want to be waiting around for their 11n to tansfer that HD content when they could just go out and buy a second or 3rd router and wirelessly Bond them together over several channels using a new firmware bonding/meshed device or 3 ;) will we Ever get wireless bonding 'end to end' in the chearer generic SOHO OEM world markets for makeing our whole home pipes into larger and larger 'mega wireless LAN pipes' easily over time. shame.