British Telecom to give UK customers 60 Mbps broadband speed

25 March 2009

One of the largest communication companies in the world and the UK's largest communications service provider BT Group will provide the next generation super-fast broadband access to 500,000 homes and businesses in six cities in the UK by 2010.

After identifying six locations in the UK where demand for super-fast broadband was the highest, BT zeroed in on Belfast, Cardiff, Edinbugh, Glasgow, London and Greater Manchester to provide to half a million homes and businesses internet users with broadband speeds of up to 60 Mbps from early 2010.

By planning to deliver broadband speed by nearly eight times faster than the current speed on its network, BT will spend £1.5 billion by 2012 and enhance the broadband speed up to 100 Mbps and provide it to 40 per cent or about 10 million of UK homes and businesses by 2012.

BT's local access division Openreach will use the FTTP technology to replace the existing copper wire and deploy fibre optic cable from BT's exchanges to cabinets at street corners at 29 exchanges across the UK.

The fibre optic cable will transform the speeds available even though the last link in the chain from the cabinet in the street to the premises will remain copper wire.

These speeds, using FTTP technology of fibre to the premise, are substantially ahead of any other residential service in the UK. Copper-based broadband services offering speeds of up to 24 Mbps are currently being used in 40 per cent of UK homes and business.