The Budget in March saw Chancellor George Osborne announce 10 cities that will soon have ultra-fast broadband.

Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Bradford, Newcastle, Manchester, Belfast, Edinburgh, Cardiff and London have all successfully bid to become “Super-Connected Cities” with ultrafast fixed broadband access, and large areas of public wireless connectivity. The Government define ultrafast broadband as having a minimum download speed of at least 80Mbps.

The 10 cities will share £100 million to help deliver ambitious plans to use super-connected status to drive growth, attract new businesses and transform the way services are provided and accessed.

The Chancellor also announced that a new £50 million fund will be created to bring ultra-fast broadband to even more UK cities.

Together the 10 proposals involve providing ultrafast broadband access to around 1.7 million premises and 200,000 businesses by 2015 while almost 3 million residents would have access to a wireless network.