A NEW, high-speed communications network designed to save businesses, shops, schools and other organisations time and money has been expanded in the South West by BT.

Yelverton, Broadstone (Dartmouth) and Worle (Somerset) are the latest communities in the region to benefit from the upgrade. BT's sophisticated Ethernet technology allows medium-sized businesses and other organisations to opt for the guaranteed broadband speed of their choice over their own dedicated line.

Customers can choose Ethernet speeds between one megabit per second (Mbps) and 10 Gigabits per second (Gbits), depending on their needs. At the top rate of 10Gbits the system is capable of transmitting 10 billion bits of information per second.

Advances in technology mean the service is available at a fraction of the cost of a comparable one provided previously by a similar, traditional private network.

Medium-sized organisations using voice, data, video and other bandwidth-hungry applications across more than one site are the most likely users. The highly flexible system can be easily expanded as a business or organisation grows.

Ethernet is available on an open, wholesale basis to all communications companies. It is already being used by many mobile phone operators to address the explosive growth in demand for mobile data services across the UK.

Jeremy Filmer-Bennett, chief executive of the Devon and Cornwall Business Council, said: "We welcome this further investment of high-speed technology in Devon and the enhancements it will make to our communications infrastructure.

'Developments like this are key to enabling local firms and organisations across a wide variety of industry sectors to thrive and grow, as well as helping them to become more efficient in the way they communicate and do business in an increasingly competitive market place.'

Jon Reynolds, BT's South West regional director, said: 'We believe high-speed Ethernet will make this great region even more attractive to potential inward investors and help existing businesses in the county work and communicate more effectively.

'It will also help public sector organisations run even more efficient networks, saving money and protecting public services.

'Ethernet gives organisations the ability to connect to their sites and customers locally, around the UK and internationally on this extremely secure and reliable network.'

This expansion of Ethernet is in addition to the £2.5 billion BT roll-out of super-fast optical fibre broadband, expected to reach two-thirds of the UK homes and businesses by the end of 2014.

Devon county councillor for Yelverton Rural Philip Sanders said: 'Anything at all that improves the broadband speed for downloading and uploading is a very positive advantage to businesses.

'We want to encourage businesses to come here and make sure existing businesses stay here so we need the fastest broadband speeds we can get, in particular for industries like graphic design where very high speeds are required.'