Scotland to benefit from early roll out of superfast broadband
Scotland is set to become one of the first locations to benefit from the largest investment in super-fast broadband ever seen in the UK. BT’s local access division Openreach today announced that it would be deploying fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) technology in Edinburgh and Glasgow early next year as part of the Scottish roll-out of a £1.5 billion project.
Speeds of up to 40Mb/s – and potentially up to 60Mb/s – will be available to more than 34,000 homes and businesses in the two cities and to 500,000 customers in the UK as a whole. These speeds are more than 10 times those experienced now by most UK households. The next set of locations – serving a further million homes and businesses – will be announced in the Autumn.
In the first major phase of the UK’s biggest ever investment programme in super-fast broadband, BT has pledged to spend £1.5 billion by 2012 to ensure 40 per cent of UK homes and businesses – some 10 million premises – can access fibre-based super-fast broadband. According to BT, the UK already leads the way in terms of DSL broadband access and penetration and their plans will ensure the UK climbs the speed tables as well.
In a speech at the SCDI conference today Steve Robertson, CEO of Openreach, the division of BT responsible for the delivery of the plans, said “Super-fast broadband is essential to Scotland’s future so it is great to announce this initial set of locations. The wider industry will now be able to plan ahead as we will be making our services available on a wholesale basis. This approach will benefit customers as there will undoubtedly be fierce competition for their business. Once again, Scotland is at the forefront of one of the most important projects to take place in recent years. It will play a vital role in the UK’s future as a knowledge-based economy”.
First Minister Alex Salmond commented “I welcome the news that Edinburgh and Glasgow will be among the first locations in the UK to have access to BT’s new super-fast broadband. Broadband is already available in 99 per cent of Scotland and the Scottish Government is rolling out a £3.3 million project to extend affordable broadband services. This technology has quickly established itself as vital communications tool for businesses and people of all ages. This new service will give customers in two of the country’s biggest cities even greater access to the opportunities and services that the internet offers.”
Openreach will 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.
FTTC technology will offer initial speeds of up to 40Mb/s with the prospect of those rising to up to 60Mb/s. This will give customers enough speed to run multiple bandwidth-hungry applications. Openreach will deliver FTTC services by installing fibre between local exchanges and the street cabinets that sit between those exchanges and the premises served by them. The fibre will transform the speeds available even though the last link in the chain – from the street cabinet to the home or office – will remain copper. Openreach is aware there are some premises that will not be able to be served by this technology and so they are currently looking at alternative solutions for those.