A surge of interest in Broadband internet access means high-speed connections are coming to surrounding towns and villages.

HIGH-SPEED internet access will soon be available in three more communities in and around Swindon.

Wootton Bassett, Stratton St Margaret and Lyneham will have the benefits of Broadband, which gives users a permanent on-line connection which is 10 times faster than a normal connection.

BT will now upgrade their telephone exchanges with Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) the technology that enables phone lines to deliver high-speed internet connection.

The company set targets called 'trigger levels' which indicate how many people need to register their interest in the broadband before it is commercially viable for BT to convert the exchange.

BT cut every broadband trigger level by 50 registrations to mark the fact it had passed its national target of one million broadband connections this summer.

As a result, the Wootton Bassett and Stratton St Margaret exchanges have been moved directly to the up-grade programme after more than 300 people in both locations registered, which means engineers are due to start work on installing the necessary equipment.

It will take about three months before residents will be able to subscribe to the service, which has a monthly flat rate cost of £28 plus a connection charge. You may need to buy an ADSL enabled modem.

Lyneham, which is covered by the Bradenstoke exchange, joined the up-grade programme last week after reaching its trigger level prior to trigger level cuts.

Gareth Williams, 30, of Ravens Walk, has been campaigning to bring Broadband to Wootton Bassett after he moved there in March and found he could not work from home.

The project manager for Intel said: "I am delighted with the news. When we started this, only 150 people had registered and now we have well over 300.

"So even without BT lowering the level we wouldn't be far behind.

"Broadband is 10 times faster than ordinary Internet access and there are a host of benefits.

"People can work from home and download files much faster. And in terms of leisure, you can download music or movie trailers, which you could do on the Internet but probably wouldn't have bothered because it was so slow. It will have quite an impact on the community.

People in Wootton Bassett can already access Broadband from NTL, but the cable company does not cover some areas of the town.

Lizzie Beesley, BT regional director for the South West, said: "This is great news for many people across the South West since reducing trigger levels across the board means that many more exchanges are that much closer to getting broadband.

"It will be welcome news for the many campaigners who have put in such terrific work and I would encourage other communities to follow their example and to work with us to bring broadband to their areas."

Not all areas have been set a trigger level. To see if your area has access to broadband then log onto www.bt.com