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BT reveal first sites for fibre-optic broadband

It’s all go for BT’s £1.5 billion fibre broadband rollout, as it announces the first pilot sites to receive the new technology.

By Asavin Wattanajantra, 13 Oct 2008 at 12:00

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BT revealed which sites are to pilot its Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) services in summer 2009, with the potential to offer 40 Mbps connections to up to 30,000 customers.

The two operational exchanges will be in Muswell Hill, London, and Whitchurch, South Glamorgan, and will be available to all UK communication providers on a wholesale basis. Other areas were shortlisted, and these exchanges could hold pilots later in 2009. Assuming the trials are successful, 2010 could be the year for a product launch.

Openreach is a division of BT which was created in 2006 to give all communication providers access to the local access network – the wires and cables which connected millions of homes and businesses to the local telephone exchanges.

Fibre to the Cabinet will involve moving fibre to cabinets located near homes and businesses. Although connections from cabinets to premises will still be over copper, the speeds will still be much faster than those currently possible over ASDL.

“We have a good mix of areas, allowing us to test our products in both urban and semi-rural environments,” said David Campbell, BT Openreach’s director of next generation access of the pilot sites.

“These two sites were chosen from a shortlist and we expect to announce detailed plans for the initial market deployment of the Openreach product in early 2010, again with full consultation with all interested parties.”

Customers within the pilot area will have engineers visiting to install fibre-compatible Network Termination Equipment (NTE) which will allow their premises to use the fibre technology.

The FTTC technology is what BT plans to use for the majority of its £1.5 billion fibre rollout

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4 comments

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Too slow too late.

100+ Mbps fibre broadband has been widely available in most South East Asian countries for over 5 years. If BT are going to come in so late at you\'d think that at least they would come in at an up to date level???

By nigelgb on Tuesday Oct 14

BT Broadband

1.5 billion pounds to be spent and broadband is still not available in some areas,indeed in Dolanog in Mid Wales for instance lines are still shared and internet use is very limited due to the slow dial up which is all that is available. Since privatisation BT has constantly cherry picked its delivery services to maximise profit and simply ignored the non profitable areas. However swapping the wonderful relaxed pace of life in mid Wales for that of a broadband rich area is not a serious option

By Hondaman on Tuesday Oct 14

Re: Too slow too late

The potential for those speeds will be there in the futute, but at the moment BT are only going halfway in terms of Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC). The extra speed will come when the complete the second phase which is Fibre To The Home (FTTH). This is the where BT are claiming that FTTH could cost around £15Bn to implement nationally and they need investment form government to make that a reality. If the situation had been different they may well have sat on their hands longer even for this first stage. Unfortunately with companies trialling wide area coverage with technologies like WiMax, which of course negates the failing copper infrastructure we have now, along with increasing speeds from mobile broadband, and other companies developing their own fibre roll-out, they fear that unless they act now they could quickly lose their dominant position of being able to offer wholesale packages to a captive audience. There\'s a definite sense that if BT don\'t time their strategy and investment right, they could lose their shirt over this, and with economics as they are I don\'t think there\'s going to be a lot of money swishing around in government for a big investment in to a fibre infrastructure any time in the short to medium term.

By Storm_Cloud on Tuesday Oct 14