Residents in a picturesque Warwickshire village today celebrated becoming the first rural community in the county to benefit from the multi-million pound CSW Broadband partnership. Pupils from Snitterfield Primary School joined Nadhim Zahawi MP, representatives from Warwickshire County Council, Stratford-upon-Avon District Council, BT and other local people to mark the ‘switch on’ of super-fast fibre broadband. Villagers can now enjoy download speeds of up to 80 megabits per second and upload speeds of up to 20Mbps*, enabling them to share larges files of information, upload photographs, download music and surf the internet faster than ever before. Snitterfield Primary School – situated at the heart of the village – suddenly found itself at the heart of the new communications network after engineers working for Openreach – BT’s local network business – installed one of the new super-fast road-side cabinets right outside the school. It is one of three needed to connect more than 840 homes and businesses in Snitterfield to the new fibre optic network. To celebrate the arrival of super-fast broadband, pupils are taking part in a poster design competition, depicting what they enjoy most about the internet, as well as learning first-hand about the new fibre optic broadband technology from Openreach apprentice engineer, James Reidy. The arrival of super-fast fibre broadband was welcomed by head teacher Sue Ogden. She said: “The internet is a vital educational tool and pupils are encouraged to use it to support their learning at home, but it’s frustrating if we can’t do things as quickly as we’d like to, so the arrival of super-fast broadband is a welcome boost for us all – teachers and pupils alike.” CSW Broadband is a £15.47 million partnership between Warwickshire County Council and its five district and borough councils, with Coventry City Council, Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, BT and the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme. Councillor Alan Cockburn, Deputy Leader of Warwickshire County Council, said: “The advent of superfast broadband will make a real difference to the residents and businesses of Snitterfield. From today people can order the new service from their existing Internet Service Provider, or they can choose from a wide range of providers offering a selection of services including bundled telephone calls and even sport or TV on demand. This is just the start of the superfast broadband rollout in Warwickshire. Over the next few months we will be seeing many more areas being connected to the new fibre network and it is good to see the work of the CSW Broadband team coming to fruition.” In addition to Snitterfield, the CSW Broadband partnership announced today it has also extended fibre to parts of Stratford-upon-Avon not already enabled by any commercial roll-out. Nadhim Zahawi said: “Bringing superfast broadband is essential for rural communities, and it’s fantastic to see the first fibre optic cabinet switched on in Snitterfield. "The Government is rightly investing over £1 billion in broadband infrastructure, and I’m looking forward to the benefits roll out across the whole constituency.” The CSW Broadband partnership will ensure around 40,000 premises in the project area have access to super-fast broadband. When combined with private sector investments, 91 cent of the area’s homes and businesses will have access to super-fast broadband by Spring 2016. Updates on the roll-out of CSW Broadband are available on the programme website: http://www.cswbroadband.org.uk