Being a resident of Redditch for some 10 years, I am now quite devoted to the town. I am also an IT professional who uses the internet a lot for business and pleasure.

As such, I recently applied to British Telecom to have ADSL (High Speed Internet) provided to my home and was told our local telephone exchange had not been upgraded to provide the required functionality.

I decided to do some more investigation within BT to find out when there were plans to upgrade the exchange. At this point, I was told there were no current plans to upgrade our exchange for ADSL.

I find this rather alarming. BT claims to have 66 per cent of the country within reach of an ADSL compliant exchange, hence they can deliver 66 per cent of the population a high-speed internet service.

This is a well publicised statistic and it is generally accepted the remaining 34 per cent are rural areas that are not deemed cost effective.

I am very disappointed that a town the size of Redditch, with a population of 80,000, isn't deemed worthy enough by BT to have the upgrade processed.

However, BT has changed things and have placed the "ball in our court" - towns and villages without an ADSL enabled exchange can now register their interest on a website and if enough registrations are placed, the exchange will be upgraded.

So I would ask residents to register their interest in getting our exchange upgraded to give us a choice and keep us up with the likes of Bromsgrove, Evesham and Worcester, all of which already have these upgrades.

The BT internet registration scheme goes live on July 1 and I would encourage all those who want the same choice as our neighbouring town to register as soon as possible.

For anyone who plans to give the response that Redditch is already broadband enabled via the Telewest cabling, I would like to remind them Telewest has a monopoly on the broadband access it is providing and, as such, is charging a premium for it.

Also, the Telewest system is not a complete broadband solution for the people of Redditch as it is only available in limited areas throughout the town.

Redditch must keep up with broadband Britain - we do not want to be left behind, as normal.

Andy Baxter

High Trees Close

Oakenshaw