BT’s Openreach wing said it would deploy its fibre technology to a further 178 exchanges under its £2.5 billion investment plan.
The exchanges announced include 34 in Scotland and 16 in Wales. Most of these will be upgraded during 2012 and the newly announced exchanges will take its national fibre programme up to around 80% completion, according to BT Openreach.
Openreach chief Olivia Garfield said super-fast broadband is already within reach of more than six million premises today and we are on track to pass 10 million premises next year. "Our ambitions do not stop there. We will make fibre available to two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2014, and we want to go even further." Garfield stated.
The rollout in Scotland would give access to more than 2,77,000 homes and businesses while the number in Wales would be nearly 1,75,000.
The rollout would offer up to 40Mbps download speeds now and will be upgraded to 80Mbps by next year.
On the whole, about 1.8 million homes and businesses will be provided access to BT’s fibre-to-the-cabinet or fibre-to-the-premises technology.
