CHIPPENHAM falls into the bottom 30 per cent of constituencies for the availability of superfast internet connections according to a new report.

The report, from the British Infrastructure Group of MPs, shows Chippenham is 469th out of the 650 UK constituencies for the availability of superfast broadband.

Chippenham’s average download speed of 24.2 Megabits per second is well below the UK average of 29.4 Mb/s and sees the area ranked 433rd across the country.

Superfast broadband is only 78 per cent available across the constituency, six per cent below the national average.

Michelle Donelan MP has co-signed the new report that also reveals that despite £1.7bn of taxpayers’ cash being pumped into subsidising the construction of UK high-speed broadband, there are still 5.7million people across Britain who cannot access the internet at the Ofcom required 10 Mb/s.

She said: “Too many of my constituents have to put up with poor quality and slow broadband because BT are not under enough pressure to improve the service, especially in new developments and rural communities.

“I believe Britain should be leading the world in digital innovation. Yet instead we suffer from having a BT-run monopoly clinging to outdated copper technology with no proper long-term plan for the future.

“Britain will only achieve this by taking action to open up the sector. Given all the delays and missed deadlines, I believe that only a formal separation of BT from Openreach, combined with fresh competition and a concerted ambition to deliver, will now create the broadband service that our constituents and businesses so rightly demand.”

The report, BroadBad, calls on the regulator Ofcom to take action over the natural monopoly enjoyed by Openreach, something dismissed by BT.

A spokesman said: “We understand the impatience for progress to be even faster, but improving broadband is a major engineering project that involves contending with all manner of physical and geographic challenges.

“The idea that there would be more broadband investment if BT’s Openreach infrastructure division became independent is wrong-headed. As a smaller, weaker, standalone company, it would struggle to invest as much as it does currently.”