Innerleithen will get fastest broadband connections in Scotland

BT Broadband has been very aggressive with expanding their networks this year. The broadband giant had earlier announced that its Fibre-to-the-Premises service would be completed by 2015, which required over £2.5 billion in investments to bring broadband connections to over two-thirds of the UK. BT has since made the announcement that are working ahead of schedule in the fibre deployment and will finish the upgrades by 2014, a full year ahead of what was previously announced.

The competition in broadband services has been specially stiff, with competition Virgin Media revealing that they had completed the first phase of their own fibre deployment, providing one-third of the UK with broadband connections of up to 100Mbps. Since then, BT had quickly introduced one more plan in their fibre broadband line of services, BT Infinity.

Now word has arrived that Innerleithen, a small Borders town, will be the next in line to get high-speed broadband connections installed in the area. This news came after the Scottish town was able to win the BT-sponsored Race to Infinity competition that was conducted last January. Since then, BT has announced that Innerleithen will be the first place in the country to have access to the FTTP broadband services.

BT revealed that it would allow the area to “streak ahead of other Scottish communities” and straight to “the forefront of Digital Britain.” Representatives from BT paid a visit to the town recently to give briefs to campaigners and to the residents with regards to the upgrade.

BT Scotland’s partnerships director James McClafferty stated: “This is fantastic news for the people of Innerleithen and the campaigners who have fought hard to win faster broadband for the town. With a mix of fibre to the cabinet and fibre to the premises technologies, Innerleithen will streak ahead of other Scottish communities and become the best connected place in Scotland. BT is investing thousands of man hours in this upgrade and installing 112 kilometres of fibre to give Innerleithen one of the highest percentages of fibre coverage to be found anywhere in the UK.”

McClafferty added: “At a time when organisations around the UK are seeking investment partners to bring superfast technologies to their areas and give them a competitive edge, Innerleithen has shot straight to the forefront of Digital Britain.”

Source – BBC