The Register®

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/09/bt_upgrade_schedule/

BT names more exchanges for early fibre upgrades

Who wants some?

By Chris Williams

Posted in Telecoms, 9th July 2009 10:59 GMT

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BT has published a further list of 69 exchanges it will upgrade to offer faster broadband by running fibre to streetside cabinets by summer next year.

The list represents the second wave of BT's network upgrade, which is now scheduled to cover 1.5 million premises by early summer next year. The first wave of 29 exchanges is listed here (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/23/bt_fttc_exchanges/).

London and the South East dominate the latest list with 24 exchanges set to benefit*. Scotland will see just four sites upgraded in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The new technology will offer "up to" 40Mbit/s downstream, and access will be also available via BT's DSL competitors.

BT said it had speeded up the rollout. Steve Robertson, CEO of Openreach, said: "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."

Earlier this week BT's first commercial deployments of fibre to the cabinet went live in London's Muswell Hill and in Whitchurch in South Glamorgan.

Earlier this week BT denied privacy concerns were to blame when it said it would not deploy Phorm's web monitoring and profiling system. Rather, it said cancelling the planned rollout would allow it to concentrate on network upgrades.

BT's plans remain to upgrade 40 per cent of its network - some 10 million premises - to fibre to the cabinet by 2012, in a programme costing £1.5bn. ®

*According to BT, Hainault in Greater London is "East of England", for example.

Bootnote

Here's the full list of exchanges:

You can check which exchange you're connected to here (http://www.samknows.com/broadband/search.php).