BT has revealed the first exchanges that will get fibre to the cabinet, starting from next year.
The telco's local-access division Openreach will deploy fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) at 29 exchanges across the UK from early 2010, bringing speeds of up to 40Mbps — and potentially 60Mbps — within reach of 500,000 homes and businesses.
The technology will also enable upstream speeds of up to 10Mbps.
BT had been waiting for regulator Ofcom to give return-on-investment guarantees on fibre before moving ahead with deployments — and earlier this month Ofcom announced telecoms providers will be able to price wholesale super-fast broadband products themselves without any regulatory intervention.
BT has pledged to spend £1.5bn by 2012 to ensure 40 percent of UK homes and businesses — some 10 million premises — can access fibre-based services. This summer it is piloting FTTC in Muswell Hill, London and Whitchurch, Wales.
The majority of the 29 FTTC exchanges announced today are in urban locations, including eight in London, six in Greater Manchester, two in Glasgow and one each for Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh. The east of England and the north-west will get six locations apiece, while Yorkshire and the Humber will get three FTTC exchanges.
Two of the exchanges are in rural locations: Taffs Well in Rhondda, South Wales and Calder Valley in West Yorkshire. BT said it will be "looking to learn lessons" — both economic and technological — from deploying fibre in such environments.
According to a BT spokeswoman, the 29 exchanges that will get FTTC were selected for a combination of reasons.
"We consulted with CPs [communications providers] and local authorities to gauge the level of interest they would see if fibre was rolled out, and that obviously played a part. We also looked at the economics of rolling it out in a given area, and how the technology would perform in that area," she told silicon.com.
The next set of locations — serving a further million homes and businesses — will be announced in the autumn, BT added.
Talkback
where are the East of England locations?
might accept Chelmsford at a stretch but what about Colchester, Ipswich, Norwich, Cambridge etc?
why can't BT go ahead and start upgrading the rural areas first? all the major cities in this country already have a fast broadband connection, with BT or Virgin, so why upgrade them to have a faster connection? when most rural areas are still only capable of 2MB (if that in some places) wouldn't it best for BT to upgrade the rural areas where some businesses now rely on a decent connection?