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BT is to speed up its implementation of fibre optic broadband cables across the UK.
The plan is to make the service available to 1.5 million homes across the UK by early summer next year. This marks the first stage of a scheme to bring fibre optic broadband to 40 per cent of UK households at an estimated cost of £1.5 billion.
“Fibre is the future and so we’re speeding up the pace of our plans,” said the CEO of BT’s Openreach division, Steve Robertson. “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.”
BT has stated that most of the deployment will involve the laying of fibre optic cables from the exchange to the street cabinets, while the connections between the street cabinets and individual households will be traditional copper lines.
The company is also keenly anticipating the creation of the Next Generation Fund, proposed in the Governments ‘Digital Britain’ report to help finance the deployment of the next generation of broadband services. BT believes that there is ‘no commercial case at present to extend fibre-based broadband,’ which has caused clashes with the company’s shareholders in the past.
A full list of the areas to see fibre optic deployment next year can be found here.
