The speed of the forthcoming fibre rollout of next generation broadband is set to double thanks to plans from BT, which should see over a million more users next year being able to access broadband speeds of up to 100Mbps.
This latest news comes in light of the announcement of 15 000 more cuts in jobs and tough financials reported. Job would be safeguarded with the help of a quicker rollout of fibre broadband said CEO Ian Livingston.
With the aim of connecting as many 10 million businesses and homes, equating to 40 percent of the UK BT announced last year that it would be spending £1.5 billion to fund fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) by 2012.
Livingston said yesterday, however, that the operator would examine ways of speeding up the rollout in a statement that followed the financial report for Q4.
Livingston said: “We will examine doubling the pace of the rollout of super fast broadband next year within existing capital expenditure plans, bringing fibre based services within the reach of more than a million homes and businesses and securing the jobs of a thousand BT people.”
Good levels of performance in many areas of BT were overshadowed by its IT services division, BT Global Services with a reported operating loss of £198 million, which Livingston said was “unacceptable” performance. Operating profits of £296 million were reported by Openreach and £324 was reported by BT Retail and its local loop unbundling division.
He said “With a recovery programme for BT Global Services in place and our heightened focus on costs and customer service, we now want to accelerate our plans for our future networks.”
The first 29 exchanges that would be getting FTTC, which would bring 500 000 business and households closer to receiving next generation broadband, were named by BT earlier in the year.
In order to increase the number of lines that were enabled up to one million over 29 exchanges would be included in the Spring 2010 FTTC rollout according to a spokeswoman for BT. She also added that autumn was the date set for the announcement of the additional ‘first wave’ FTTC exchanges.
She advised “We can’t be clear yet on the number of exchanges or where they are because we’ll be working with regional development authorities and the like to assess interest in other parts of the country to receive the FTTC solution.”
