Are you getting BT’s 100Mbps fibreoptic broadband?

by Dean Evans at Thursday 9th July, 2009 at 2:05 pm [8 comments]

BT has released a list of 69 towns in the UK that will be hooked up to fibreoptic cables to deliver super-fast home broadband.

These towns are spread across England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales and BT plans to upgrade 1.5 million homes and businesses by 2010.

BT will be installing two new technologies - Fibre to the premise (FTTP) and Fibre to the cabinet (FTTC).

FTTP describes how fibre-optic cable is deployed from the exchange directly into a customer’s home or business. This setup can deliver download speeds of up to 100Mbps – and potentially up to 1000Mbps in the future.

In contrast, FTTC is a solution whereby fibre optic cable is deployed from the exchange to the street cabinet. The rest of the connection - i.e. from the cabinet to a customer’s home - uses copper wiring.

According to BT, this combination of fibre and copper can be used to support super-fast broadband with download speeds of up to 40Mbps initially, potentially rising to 60Mbps in the future.

The super-fast broadband lottery

The initial roll-out is the first part of BT’s longer-term project to make super-fast fibre broadband available to 40 per cent of the UK by 2012.

BT has pledged to invest £1.5 billion on the project, which it says is the UK’s biggest single commercial investment in fibre broadband.

“Fibre is the future and so we’re speeding up the pace of our plans,” said Steve Robertson, CEO of BT Openreach. “We had aimed to get fibre to half a million homes by next March but we’re now being far more ambitious. We’ve received a tremendous response to date and so we’re keen to get on with the job.”

So are you on the list? Take a look at the list of towns below.

East England

Berkhamsted
Billericay
Brentwood
Elstree
Hainault
Hoddesdon
Lea Valley
Loughton
Stanford-Le-Hope
Waltham Cross
Woodford

East Midlands

Glossop
Hinckley

London

Barking
Barnet
Eltham
Greenwich
Hornchurch
Ingrebourne
New Southgate
Ponders End
Sidcup
Slade Green
Stamford Hill

North East England

Chester-Le-Street
Durham
East Herrington
Hetton-Le-Hole

North West England

Altrincham
Ashton-Under-Lyne
Cheetham
Chorlton
Denton
Hyde
Manchester East
Moss Side
Prestwich
stalybridge
Swinton, Greater Manchester
Urmston
Walkden
Wilmslow

Northern Ireland

Lisburn

Scotland

Edinburgh Corstorphine
Edinburgh Craiglockhart
Glasgow Bridgeton
Glasgow Giffnock

South East England

Basingstoke
Dartford

South West England

Bristol North
Bristol West
Downend

Wales

Barry
Caerphilly
Penarth

West Midlands

Birmingham, Northern
Fallings Park
Great Barr
Leamore
Nuneaton
Tettenhall
Wednesbury
Walsall

Yorkshire

Armley
Castleford
Headingley
Low Moor
Pontefract
Shipley

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8 Responses to “Are you getting BT’s 100Mbps fibreoptic broadband?”

Comment by John — July 25, 2009 @ 1:39 pm

Hi I live in warrington can any one tell me if they is any plans for warrington exchange to me converted to fibreoptic broadband.

Thanks
John

Comment by Dean Evans — July 27, 2009 @ 2:37 pm

As far as I’m aware, the Warrington exchange is already enabled for BT’s 21st Century Network infrastructure. The switchover date is set for Q3 2010 according to the information here. Hope that helps.

Comment by John — August 16, 2009 @ 1:27 pm

Does that mean i will enjoy faster speeds of up to 40mbps

Thanks
John

Comment by Dean2 — September 1, 2009 @ 3:20 pm

The key phrase to remember is “up to…”
Quite a non-specific marketing declaration by a greedy corporation.

Dean2

Comment by bill — December 21, 2009 @ 2:16 pm

i see bt have very favourable to the affluent areas in the north west, how about runcorn east exchange,i am still struggling along on 2 meg copper line, yet only half a mile away business is on fibre optic with its high speed link, here’s hoping!!

Comment by Chris Evans — January 10, 2010 @ 8:13 am

Take a look at the number of South West exchanges to be upgraded, only 3. 2 of them are in Bristol which as a matter of fact, is a city, not a town. I really hope BT start to pay more attension to the South West because some of the broadband services out here are unacceptable. I am one of the lucky ones to get almost full ADSL speed at the moment but some other residents in nearby villiages which are served by the exchange only get 0.80 mbps. The sooner BT install FTTC & FTTP the better. You would have thought that it would cost more money to dig up the roads in a CITY than in a Villiage wouldn’t you? Same goes for the equipment in the exchange. They need more of it to serve more people.

Chris

Comment by dave — January 31, 2010 @ 4:27 pm

hi i wanted to know if handsworth in the wsetmidlands will be part of the 2010 switchover

Comment by matt — February 9, 2010 @ 2:51 pm

Hi,I live in Featherstone which is 4350m from the fallings park exchange.I can see from your list it is due to be upgraded to fibre optic,but firstly,when is this due and secondly,is the fibre optic coming all the way to the homes or just the exchange? Will this make a big difference as at present I can only get 0.5mbps?Thanks for all replies,Matt.