BT announce next phase of commercial fibre roll-out strategy
Yesterday, BT announced it will add another 1.2million homes and businesses to its fibre footprint as part of its target of reaching two thirds of UK premises during Spring 2014. The announcement marks the latest phase of its £2.5 billion commercial fibre roll-out strategy.
The 1.2million new homes and businesses will be reached as part of plans to upgrade 99 new exchanges before or during Spring next year; serving about 600 premises with fibre in new areas spread mostly across Scotland, the Midlands the North East and North West of England. An additional 600,000 homes and businesses will gain access to fibre broadband as a result of ‘infill’ work in other previously announced areas.
This latest announcement brings the total number of BT’s exchange areas in the UK to 1,700, covering 19 million premises – which will make up the majority of its commercial fibre footprint.
BT will build on its commercial roll-out through ongoing work with Broadband Delivery UK, in order to penetrate the ‘final third’ of homes and premises.
Commenting, Mike Glavin, Managing Director, NGA, Openreach, stated: “The UK is making great progress with super-fast broadband and this latest phase of work will keep up the momentum. Speeds are increasing all the time with the UK second only to Japan within the G8. I am sure that communities across the UK will be pleased to see that they are factored into our commercial plans and I now look forward to working with Councils to identify further areas that we can enable with their support???
Openreach is deploying a mix of fibre-based technologies including Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC), offering download speeds of up to 80mbps, and Fibre-to-the-Premise (FTTP), capable of up to 330mbps. However, from Spring 2013, BT will begin to make FTTP commercially available on-demand in areas where FTTC has already been deployed.
BT Press release, including 99 new exchange list
Photo courtesy of BT