BT speeds up fibre plans in Edinburgh and Glasgow
Another 25,000 homes and businesses in Edinburgh and Glasgow could benefit from superfast broadband after BT today revealed the next locations where it will make fibre broadband services available. Edinburgh’s Craiglockhart and Corstorphine exchanges plus Giffnock and Bridgeton in the east side of Glasgow – a key location in the Clyde Gateway Regeneration project and for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in the city – are added to the 34,000 premises announced in March.
The new locations will take the number of superfast lines in Scotland to almost 70,000. The acceleration of BT’s plans means 1.5 million UK homes have access to fibre broadband by early summer 2010. A million of those homes will have access by March, doubling the original pace of deployment.
The plan is the first chapter in BT’s longer-term programme to make fibre broadband available to 40 per cent of the UK – or some 10 million homes – by 2012. The company has pledged to spend £1.5 billion – the UK’s biggest single commercial investment in fibre broadband – on this programme.
Unlike other companies, BT will offer access to service providers on an open, wholesale basis thereby supporting a competitive market.
Bob Downes, director of Openreach in Scotland, the division of BT responsible for the roll-out, said: “This builds rapidly on the announcement three months ago when we named the first exchanges in Edinburgh and Glasgow to deliver superfast broadband on 34,000 lines by early 2010. This latest addition takes that to around 70,000 and is great news for Scotland now and in the long term. “Glasgow Bridgeton has a key role to play for the city in one of the biggest regeneration programmes in Europe and will be vital for the Commonwealth Games”.
Steve Robertson, CEO of Openreach, said: “Fibre is the future and so we’re speeding up the pace of our plans. 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.
Openreach announced it would be making fibre based services available to more than 30,000 homes and businesses from exchanges serving the areas around Glasgow University and the arts galleries and in the Hillington Park innovation centre and business park development. In Edinburgh, super-fast broadband will become available to 4,000 customers in Stockbridge and the New Town.