Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2014/01/24/bt_fibre_investment_adds_50_million_to_pile/

Achtung NIMBYs! BT splurges extra £50m on fibre broadband rollout

Yet more ghastly streetside broadband cabinets coming to 30 cities around Blighty

By Kelly Fiveash

Posted in Networks, 24th January 2014 13:21 GMT

BT is throwing a further £50m at its commercial deployment of fibre cabling for faster broadband connections and has said that 30 cities in Britain will benefit from the cash splurge.

The telecoms giant will use its existing copper wiring infrastructure to hook up most of the 400,000 urban dwellings that it plans to upgrade to fibre.

BT said that it was able to widen its Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) tech rollout in cities after Culture Secretary Maria Miller pushed through legislation in Parliament that allowed the telco to upgrade the nation's internet infrastructure without meddling from local councils.

The cabinets in question had missed out on BT's original £2.5bn commercial investment because of "technical challenges or local planning restrictions," the company said.

With the new wad of cash, BT said it would also connect some apartment blocks to its FTTC tech. A small number of new build sites will be the only properties to see fibre pumped directly into the premises (FTTP).

Separately, it is the only telco to have secured public funds to deploy faster broadband network speeds to rural parts of the country as part of the (delayed) £530m BDUK project.

Whitehall divvied up money for more remote areas in Britain, after BT and Virgin Media said that they couldn't find a commercial case for investing their own funds in those parts of the UK without any support from central government.

However, rival telcos have complained about what they say is a lack of competition in the entire BDUK process after BT bagged all the tax-payer-funded contracts. ®