In just over a year’s time a further 1.2 million premises will have access to BT’s super-fast fibre internet. Openreach are aiming to upgrade 99 new exchanges to fibre technology, serving approximately 600,000 premises. Furthermore an additional 600,000 will gain access to fibre due to “infill” work in previously announced areas.
Most of the newly announced exchange upgrades are in Scotland, the Midlands, the North East and North West of England. The total number of UK exchanges that will be fibre enabled will then total around 1,700. That network will be able to fibre-connect over 14 million premises.
Two thirds of UK premises on the fibre network by spring 2014
Mike Galvin, Managing Director, NGA, Openreach, said “The UK is making great progress with super-fast broadband and this latest phase of work will keep up the momentum. Speeds are increasing all the time with the UK second only to Japan within the G8”. He added that Openreach engineers are “working round the clock” and a full two thirds of the premises in the UK should be reached by fibre by spring 2014.
There’s an important bit of small-print at the end of the press release (just above the list of 99 new exchanges). It reminds readers that even if your nearest exchange is on the list it doesn’t mean that you will get this fibre based super-fast broadband option; “Due to the current network topography, and the economics of deployment, it is likely that some premises within selected exchange areas will not initially be able to access fibre-based broadband. Openreach is considering alternative solutions for these locations.”
For the full alphabetical list of the newly announced 99 exchanges scheduled to be upgraded please go to BT’s press release page here and scroll down.
