Russell Brown, MP for Dumfries and Galloway, has backed a fibre optic broadband expansion in Stranraer.

Mr Brown claimed the new scheme, which will see 4,500 businesses benefit from a portion of BT's £2.5 billion UK-wide budget for high-speed internet expansion, will help local businesses to improve the economy of the area.

"Superfast fibre broadband in Stranraer offers huge benefits to local residents and businesses and will help our local economy to flourish. Better, faster communications help businesses to grow," Mr Brown explained.

Some 700 homes and businesses in Stranraer already have access to fibre optic broadband, but community leaders want to see this continue as Scotland looks to bolster its digital economy.

BT has also recently expanded its fibre optic broadband to a number of other locations in Scotland.

The telecoms company promised it will create more than 1,000 posts for engineers in the nation to keep up with demand - something that will help the country's struggling labour market.

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19th March 2014

Stranraer town has had relativity fast broadband available via suppliers like Talk talk and Sky since 2010. My concern is that after all this hype, with MP's and MSP's quick to associate themselves with the spending of public money to support the expansion of B.T's ( a commercial body) own network. Is that the remote areas of Dumfries and Galloway with Business's that either cannot get Broadband at all at the moment or broadband with sub 1MB connection speeds, will be in exactly the same boat ! Surely ensuring all areas of D&G get a good 8Mbit/s connection is better than improving what is already OK broadband, to those already who already have it . B.T. are the only real benefactors of this exercise.