BT said that it plans to more than double the number of homes that will receive the fastest fibre broadband service. It plans to offer speeds of up to 100Mb/s to around 2.5 million UK homes and businesses using fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) technology.
The company said that the fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) technology will be able to offer speeds of up to 1Gbps. The roll out of the fibre services has already begun and the company expects to reach 1.5 million homes by next summer.
BT had originally planned to roll out FTTP to approximately one million premises – within its overall plan to reach 10 million homes with fibre by 2012 – with the remaining homes receiving fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) services (which will deliver initial speeds of up to 40Mb/s).
The company said that it will deploy FTTP in some areas where copper services are already available, broadening its strategy as initially FTTP was to be deployed in new build sites only. The expansion will remain within its overall investment of £1.5 billion.
Steve Robertson, CEO of Openreach, the part of BT responsible for deploying the technology, said: “This development shows that we are determined to bring world-leading broadband speeds to UK homes and businesses. Service providers have asked us for more FTTP and so we have listened to them.
“The UK already leads the world when it comes to broadband availability and today’s announcement will help the UK climb the speed league tables as well. The UK is well placed but we need to invest for the future so that customers can access the rich applications that will be popular in a few years time.”
