Are you getting BT’s 100Mbps fibreoptic broadband?

by Dean Evans at Thursday 9th July, 2009 at 2:05 pm [4 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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4 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