Special report: Looking for ways to ensure there are no dead ends on Shropshire's superfast broadband highway

In this elaborate game of join-the-dots, 770,000 metres of fibre-optic cables have been laid in Shropshire.

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That's just under 450 miles – or enough wire to travel to Dunkirk and back. It has all been in the name of bringing faster broadband speeds to just over 40,000 premises around the county, and another 20,000 are set to be connected before the current phase of work draws to an end.

Now investigations are under way that will see Connecting Shropshire – a standalone organisation set up to deliver superfast broadband for Shropshire Council, BT, and the government's BDUK campaign – look at filling in the gaps that remain when the roll-out is complete. Connecting Shropshire project manager Chris Taylor said: "We are past halfway in phase one, we've done about 40,000 people's premises, and have another 12 months and are due to finish phase one next winter.

"But we always appreciate there's work to do, and have signed another contract with BT that will reach another 4,000 premises. That takes us to 2017-18, and there's still a further gap and that's what we are working towards."

He added: "Satellite is a technology that's coming into Shropshire very soon as part of an initiative we are exploring.

"But BT is not the only game in town, there are other providers providing more than adequate coverage in some really challenging places – Userve in Telford for example.

"Having lived in a rural location near Bishop's Castle I can understand it is more important in some respects – it provides equality in things like business and healthcare."

To access the new fibre connections, users must contact their internet provider and request an upgrade, and when more than 20 per cent of people do so BT provides a rebate to the campaign which can be reinvested.

That figure has now been triggered, and the £2.3 million clawback is set to help the roll-out go further, although various measures are being established to encourage people to access the fibre network, and to make best use of improved speeds.

The campaign has around £11.7 million ringfenced, from the BDUK and the Marches LEP, which will help it kick oninto hard-to-reach areas.

Steve Charmley, Shropshire Council's business and culture portfolio holder, is among those to have recently seen the benefit of the roll-out from his home in Whittington. As well as his role with the council, he runs the UK arm of Rah Rah Rugby, a recruiter for rugby teams all over the world, and said he was enjoying the broadband boost. His broadband speed accelerated from 0.4 MbPS to 35.

The web is, of course, infiltrating every corner of modern life.

And demand for data is growing. When Facebook introduced a new system which means that video's auto-play last year, it instantly meant that around one sixth of the world's population were streaming videos online they would not previously have watched. But demand, if anything, is accelerating. No longer will web users just want to log on via their smartphones or PCs, but in the future our cars, our watches, even our fridges will be connected to our phones, and to one another via the so-called Internet of Things.

The network that is being built in Shropshire today is addressing demand for new products that have not yet event hit the market.

"It will be able to monitor whatever you want it to," said Mr Taylor. "It's very much an emerging technology, and the big winners will be in manufacturing and farming where there's some really interesting stuff happening, and that will probably start to change people's and businesses' perceptions about of what the opportunities are."