BT Shows First Fiber-Optic Broadband Rollout Plans

MJackson writes "BT has revealed new details about the roll-out of its £1.5bn programme to deploy super fast fibre optic broadband to as many as 10 million UK homes (40%) by 2012. Scotland will become one of the first places to benefit from next-generation broadband services, with more than 34,000 homes and businesses in Edinburgh and Glasgow receiving speeds of up to 40Mbps and potentially 60Mbps from early next year (2010). Overall, BT Openreach, which is responsible for ensuring that all rival operators have equality of access to BT's local network, aims to deploy Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) based next generation broadband services next summer (2010) to 500,000 homes and businesses in the UK."

Comments

A big step forward

[renesch]

now they will be able to install CCTVs even in private homes

Re:What do we need the bandwidth for?

[RegularFry]

iPlayer and whatever content providers BT wants to get into bed with will eat this up.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[starsky51]

You're right. Progress is a pain in the arse!

Re:Not too bad... how about 1,000 MBps?

[TheThiefMaster]

Actually, despite their advertising, all Virgin have deployed is a fiber backbone, not "fiber broadband", which would include fibre to the home. For the last mile their 50Mb service goes over the same cables they've used all along.

Not that it matters much when you get 50Mbps downstream and nearly 2Mbps upstream.

Scotland is first because...

[Dan B.]

...both Edinburgh and Glasgow have relatively few BT customers at present. The residents in each city looking for broadband are pretty much all subscribers to the two major cable companies that provide phone services, pay TV and unlimited 1~10MB (shared bandwidth) cable internet for a fairly low fee. The cities are also fairly dense, but not too populated, thus making them good public pilot sites. There are also two fantastic Universities right in the heart of the cities that probably influence a lot of local council decisions.