BT Group has flagged it will start its proposed national rollout of fibre in January 2010, which will bring access to super-fast broadband to a million homes and businesses across the UK.
In an exclusive interview with Bill Murphy, MD for BT Business, CBR learned that the telecommunications giant will also continue with its rollout of high-speed ADSL2+ based services, bringing broadband speeds in excess of 20 mbps to 55% of the UK, up from the current coverage level of 40%.
BT’s ADSL2+ rollout plans will be reviewed once that stage has been reached, he said.
Murphy said that there was an estimated 112,000 businesses in the UK that already have access to fibre-based superfast broadband.
Many more of the 4 million of so businesses in the UK will have access come the start the year, he confirmed.
Openreach will deploy fibre to the cabinet technology at 69 exchanges across the UK, bringing speeds of up to 40 mbps and potentially 60 mbps. Fibre to the cabinet involves pushing fibre out from the local exchange building to the green street cabinets that are generally located within 1km of all the homes and offices they serve.
“We are laying down the broadband infrastructure business needs to support remote knowledge workers and enable adoption of cloud computing,” he said.
Murphy confirmed that BT Business has announced the two sites for operational pilots of fibre to the cabinet to begin this quarter.
Two exchanges in Muswell Hill, north London and Whitchurch, outside of Cardiff will be used, involving up to 15,000 customer premises for each area.
End user customers in these areas will experience headline speeds of up to 40Mb. “It’s a precursor to us rolling out fibre to the kerb nationally,” he said.
We understand that BT’s plan means 1.5 million UK homes will have access to fibre broadband by early summer 2010. A million of those will be capable of receiving by March. Areas of Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Greater Manchester will be among the first locations to benefit from this initial deployment.
Murphy said it was too early to discuss pricing for the new services.
“Key to any successful network rollout is to drive up connectivity and BT is keen to come out with a competitive offering,” he said. “We expect businesses to go for the highest speed on offer. Take up to date for high-speed broadband services has been very good, and there is definitely a demand for speed. Users like the experience.”
