More fibre broadband for Northern Ireland

It has been announced that there is to be an increase in the availability of fibre based high speed broadband in Northern Ireland courtesy of communications giant BT.

According to recent reports Northern Ireland has received some good news recently with regards to access to and availability of fibre based high speed broadband services. Communications giant BT has said that it is going to speed up provision of fibre to the cabinet broadband in the area.

The move by BT will result in the number of lines connected to a fibre broadband network in Northern Ireland rising from fifty four percent to eighty eight percent. This will make Northern Ireland one of the best connected locations to FTTC broadband in the world according to officials from BT.

When announcing its plans BT confirmed that Northern Ireland would have “more fibre deployed by March 2012 than most major European countries aspire to roll-out by 2015″. A new programme has also been launched to deal with digital exclusion in Northern Ireland, and this is called Connected Communities.

There are already two hundred existing staff and contractors that have been hired to complete the work and BT has said that it will be taking on an additional sixty. Once the service has been rolled out residents and businesses will enjoy download speeds of up to 40Mbps and upload speeds of up to 10Mbps.

Neelie Kroes, the European Commission’s Digital Agenda commissioner, wants countries to aim for 30Mbps speeds for all consumers and 100Mbps speeds for at least fifty percent of consumers by 2020.

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Source - http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2011/02/21/245529/Northern-Ireland-to-get-more-fibre-broadband.htm