BT unveils fibre broadband roll-out plans for London

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BT has announced a major roll-out of super-fast broadband in London in advance of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Under the plan, 87 percent of homes and small businesses in London will be served by exchanges enabled for fibre broadband by spring 2011 (large companies already have access to such services on a private basis). This follows the recent news that, assuming an acceptable environment for investment, BT is planning to invest an additional GBP 1 billion on top of the GBP 1.5 billion it has already announced to extend fibre broadband to around two-thirds of UK homes by 2015. BT's previous undertaking was to get fibre-based services to around 40 percent of the UK in 2012. As well as announcing its fibre roll-out plan, BT has confirmed that the vast majority of homes and businesses in Greater London already have access to much faster copper broadband as well. More than 90 percent of households and businesses in Greater London currently have access to copper broadband speeds of up to 20 Mbps and BT expects this to increase in the future. BT has upgraded almost all of its telephone exchanges in London to deliver these faster speeds. Fibre-based broadband currently delivers speeds of between up to 40 Mbps and up to 100 Mbps depending on which service is deployed. Under the new plan, 114 exchanges across London - serving more than 2 million homes and businesses - will be upgraded to deliver such services by spring 2011. This is an addition to the 500,000 premises in London which will have access to the service by late-summer 2010.