BT reveals fast broadband votes

Malvern may have won the vote but it might not get fast broadband until 2012.

A village in Cambridgeshire and town in Worcestershire will be among the first to benefit from a "vote for fibre" scheme launched by BT.

Caxton in Cambridgeshire and Malvern in Worcestershire are the first to have registered more than 1,000 votes.

Despite being first, the two may not be upgraded until early 2012, BT said.

More than 200,000 votes have been cast across the UK in the scheme set up to identify demand for fast broadband.

The project - which runs until the end of December - is aimed at identifying areas of greatest demand as BT begins its roll-out of fibre-optic technology.

BT will have rolled out super-fast broadband - delivering speeds of up to 100Mbps (megabits per second) - to four million homes and businesses by the end of the year.

That number will be pushed up to 16 million by the end of 2015.

Farningham in Kent may be considering applying for the scheme, as it is labelled as the worst broadband blackspot in Britain.

Research conducted by broadband comparison website Top10 found it was the slowest in the country, with an average download speed of 1.3Mbps.

Worcester was the only city to make it on to the list for slow broadband, with Lincolnshire the worst county with three of the slowest locations.

Not everywhere in Lincolnshire is in the slow lane though.

The village of Ashby-de-la-Launde in Lincolnshire has just had fibre-to-the-home technology installed, offering the 63 homes and two farms in the area speeds of up to 100Mbps.

The fibre, which is costing home owners £25 a month, was installed by community broadband firm NextGenUs.

The list of broadband blackspots shows a north/south speed divide with Farningham and the market town of Holsworthy in Devon the only locations south of London.

"It is a shame that in this day and age broadband blackspots continue to exist. The UK needs to offer top broadband speeds across the country regardless of geographic location, which is something the UK's networks are failing to deliver," said Alex Buttle, director of Top10.

"With Virgin, BT and other networks now making their super-fast fibre optic networks a priority, let's hope this converts into improved broadband speed for people in every area of the UK, whether urban or rural - and however low the population," he added.

BT has said that it will require public funds to reach the so-called final third of the UK that it is not economically viable to supply fast broadband to.

The government has pledged to offer every home a minimum broadband speed of 2Mbps by 2015, three years later than the date promised by Labour.