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Openreach unveils more locations for super-fast broadband

8th April 2011 Print

Openreach has revealed a further 156 locations across the country which will benefit from its roll-out of super-fast fibre broadband services.

The new exchanges serve more than 1.5 million consumer and business premises. The majority of them will be enabled for fibre broadband during 2011, with more than 50 due to be upgraded by the end of this Summer. The remaining exchanges will be offering fibre broadband by the end of 2012. To assist communications providers with their planning, Openreach will provide industry with a more specific date for the enablement of each exchange six months prior to an exchange being upgraded to fibre broadband.

The new locations announced today include the 10 exchange areas that won BT Retail’s recent Race to Infinity competition, where members of the public were asked to cast votes for their community to be upgraded to the BT Infinity fibre broadband service.

David Campbell, Managing Director of Next Generation Access for Openreach, said: “Our fibre programme is well underway with more than four million premises now able to order a fibre-based broadband service from their chosen supplier. And today we’re announcing a new set of locations serving a further 1.5 million premises, many of which will be able to enjoy the benefits of super-fast upload and download speeds from as early as this Summer. We’ll continue to work closely with industry and local and devolved authorities around the country in deciding where to deploy the technology next.”

BT has pledged £2.5 billion to deliver fibre broadband to two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2015, and is committed to working with central and local government to find innovative ways of bringing fibre to those areas which are more difficult to reach. The company has already announced partnerships in Cornwall and Northern Ireland and hopes to announce more in the future.

BT will be deploying a combination of Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC), offering speeds of up to 40Mb/s and Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP), delivering speeds of up to 100Mb/s. These speeds allow customers to benefit from the super-fast upload and download of rich digital media files and an enhanced online experience when gaming, social networking or watching streamed video.

Openreach is the part of BT responsible for rolling out fibre across the country, with the technology being available to all UK communications providers on an open, wholesale basis. For further information on Openreach’s super-fast broadband programme, visit superfast-openreach.co.uk.