BT names 156 towns for next fibre rollout phase
Summary: The company has laid out plans of the next phase of its fibre rollout, promising the option of super-fast internet connections for an additional 1.5 million homes
BT Openreach has released details of the next 156 locations that will receive super-fast fibre broadband connections before the end of 2012.
The "majority" of the exchanges in the towns will be fibre-enabled by the end of 2011, with more than 50 scheduled to be upgraded before the end of the summer. The remainder will be upgraded before the end of 2012, Openreach said in a statement.
BT Openreach has named 156 locations that will get super-fast broadband connections. Photo credit: didbygraham on Flickr
Once fibre-enabled, the exchanges will provide an additional 1.5 million homes with the option of signing up for a super-fast broadband connection, Openreach said. The service is already available to approximately four million homes, David Campbell, Openreach's managing director of next-generation access, said on Thursday.
The connections will be a combination of fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) and fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) and will offer speeds of up to 40Mbps and up to 100Mbps, respectively. Openreach told ZDNet UK that only the 10 winners of BT's Race to Infinity competition, which form part of the super-fast broadband location list, will get faster FTTP connectivity, while the rest of those on the list will get slower FTTC.
The announcement forms part of the company's £2.5bn drive to bring fibre connectivity to two-thirds of UK premises by 2015. In January, the company also announced 41 market towns that would receive FTTC connectivity before the end of 2012.
Openreach said it will inform the telecoms industry of each upgrade six months in advance, to "assist communications providers with their planning".
On Monday, UK ISPs wrote to communications minister Ed Vaizey to say the government's next-generation broadband plans were under threat due to BT setting its infrastructure access prices too high.
BT is also upgrading its copper network to cover 80 percent of the UK with connections of up to 20Mbps before the end of the year. It had previously said that 75 percent of the UK would be covered by spring 2011, but it missed that target.
Click through for a list of BT's latest super-fast broadband locations.
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Talkback
That means BT can intercept your browsing and sell details of your demograohics for commercial gain without asking you, all over again. Just a lot faster.
Then they can remove you and your posts from their forums when you complain about it, much faster.
Integrity? they've heard of it.
Check out https:\\nodpi.com
I am in London and struggle to get more than 5Meg.
Our present so called 'broadband' struggles to reach 1.5 Mb and is ofen not usable at all.
All we want is FTC, which would benefit about 500 customers at a stroke!
My current download speed peaks at around 1.5Mbps and my upload speed peaks at around 400Kbps.
I pay the same price as most people as my ISP increased the tariff on the pretext that everyone would be getting at least 8Mbps very soon shortly to be followed by 20Mbps.
They cannot possibly provide the speeds promised with our ancient twisted paired wires!