Six winners to be among first to get BT Infinity super-fast broadband

BT has added an extra winner to its broadband competition because of the high demand shown by communities.

Originally the three-month Race to Infinity broadband competition set out to find five communities in the UK where demand for super-fast broadband was the highest.

However, the communications giant said because six areas drummed up so much support, they would all be included in the planned initial deployment of the company's fibre-optic broadband.

Gavin Patterson, BT Retail's chief executive, said several areas that entered just missed out, but should be proud of themselves as the effort put into their campaigns was not wasted.

"Congratulations to the winners and commiserations to those who haven't been successful, but all their efforts haven't been in vain because their votes will help influence our plans in the future," he said.

BT's Infinity fibre-optic broadband is capable of download speeds of up to 40Mbits/sec and upload speeds of up to 10Mbits/sec. More than 360,000 votes were cast across the UK during the competition that finished on 31 December 2010.

The winners are Baschurch, Shropshire; Blewbury, Oxfordshire; Caxton, Cambridgeshire; Innerleithen, Scottish Borders; Madingley, Cambridgeshire; Whitchurch, Hampshire.

The next step is for Openreach to complete a survey to assess and plan fibre deployment to the winning areas, which should be enabled by early 2012 at the latest.

BT has pledged to invest £2.5bn to deliver super-fast fibre broadband to two-thirds of the UK by 2015. It has already earmarked other areas, including Cornwall, where the infrastructure for the super-fast broadband service will be built over the next two years.

In addition the company is planning a technical trial of 1Gbits/sec broadband speeds in Kesgrave, Suffolk.