Gavin has been campaigning on behalf of residents in South Staffordshire to have access to high speed broadband.Delays by the service providers has meant that the deliverance dates for broadband have been delayed numerous times.
Gavin has called on the companies responsible to deliver the service that residents pay for. He has sought interventions from Ministers, including the Minister responsible for broadband, and will continue to do so until the roll out day of the project. Gavin has consistantly criticised the company in their failure to deliver high speed broadband and failing to notify residents of the delay, with some villages having their deliverance dates pushed back three times in the past year.
Since his election, Gavin has been campaigning for faster broadband. In modern society, broadband and mobile phones have become an essential part of day to day life, for homes, businesses and in education. Currently, South Staffordshire’s average download speed ranks as poorly as 567 out of the 650 parliamentary constituencies in the UK. It is for this reason that this campaign is of fundamental importance to helping and improving our community.
Gavin is proud to represent such a beautiful part of the country, of which our rural community plays such a huge part. At present, the average download speed in rural areas such as Trysull and Seisdon is 5.6mb/s compared with a staggering 31.9mb/s in Wolverhampton South West. Gavin's campaign hopes to expand on the successful connection that the urban areas enjoy such as Wolverhampton North East, where 99% of residents are able to access Superfast Broadband. Rural areas should not be disadvantaged on the basis of their location. Residents in these areas have just the same need of broadband as those in the cities, if not more due to limited access to city centres.
As technology such as the internet is such a necessity to modern day life, the need to improve the availability of superfast broadband to constituents has never been greater.
For more information on the current status of fibre broadband in your area visit the superfast fibre broadband availability checker on the Openreach website
http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/where-and-when/
A copy of Gavin's petition is available to download below
