Unhappy bunnies
However, while BT's programme is certainly good news for Northern Ireland, PC Pro has reported that the lottery nature of the rollout is leaving thousands of homes in blackspots, even though the area they are situated in is meant to have access to fibre broadband.
Apparently industry insiders have told the website that up to 60 percent of street-level cabinets have been left out of the fibre loop.
Stuart Watson, broadband product manager at Zen Internet that resells BT's fibre service, reportedly said: "BT Openreach describes an exchange as in progress if there are ten cabinets live, but there could be 70 or 80 or more cabinets in that area - customers are seeing when their exchange is enabled but not when their cabinet is going to be, or even if it's going to be upgraded, because only about 40 percent or 50 percent of cabinets in a given area are scheduled or are likely to be upgraded."
"BT needs to make it clearer what an enabled exchange means, make clear that a rollout can take place over three, four or five months and make clear that just because an exchange is enabled the actually coverage in that area could be 40 percent or 50percent," he reportedly added.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, BT has told PC Pro that it disagrees with the magnitude of the problem but that some cabinets might be ‘revisited later' if not upgraded during the initial installation.
A BT spokesperson reportedly said: "We aim for as much coverage as possible within our technical and commercial parameters. On average the figure is around 85 percent of an exchange area - this may be higher or much lower depending on the infrastructure and the market."
BT apparently said that there are only a handful of exchanges with around 40 percent of cabinets upgraded and there is an average of over 70 percent of cabinets enabled in each exchange area, covering around 85 percent of homes and businesses.
The firm told the website that technical factors and return on investment play a part when it decided which cabinets to upgrade.
