Super-fast fibre broadband goes live in Uttoxeter and Longton
Upgrade hailed by Staffordshire County Council as more than 37,000 more Staffordshire homes and businesses set to benefit from BT’s £2.5 billion roll-out
Super-fast broadband has arrived in two more North Staffordshire communities, BT announced today.
Nearly 2,000 homes and businesses in Uttoxeter and more than 600 in Longton now have access to the high-speed technology. They will increase to more than 7,200 in Uttoxeter and over 30,000 in Longton as engineers complete the local upgrades in the weeks ahead.
More than 246,000 homes and businesses across Staffordshire are already able to benefit from BT’s £2.5 billion fibre programme, rising to more than 360,000 by the end of Spring 2014.
Mike Cook, BT’s regional director for the West Midlands, said: “Our roll-out of fibre broadband continues at a world class pace in the region with Uttoxeter and Longton the latest places to benefit. More than two million homes and businesses across the UK are already using our new fibre network. Local residents now have the opportunity to join them and find out for themselves why there’s such a buzz about fibre broadband.
“Whatever you’re doing online, you can do it better and faster with fibre. Whether it’s shopping, downloading music and video, watching TV, social networking, studying or researching homework, once you’ve switched to fibre you’ll never look back. Outside the home, it also has huge potential for public services and city businesses.
“Businesses working better with fibre tell us it’s helping them in a wealth of ways, from day to day activities like downloading software, collaborating with clients and moving large data files around to big business decisions like expanding the workforce or introducing better quality IT services at less cost.
“BT is not just building a national communications network fit for 21st century Britain; we’re doing it at speed, making fibre broadband available to around 80,000 more premises a week.
”We’ve always said we’d like to work with the public sector to expand the fibre footprint beyond the commercial boundaries and in some parts of the West Midlands we are excited to be doing exactly that through our partnerships with the local authorities, including here in Staffordshire, as well as in Coventry Solihull and Warwickshire, Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire.”
BT’s fibre footprint currently passes more than 17 million UK homes and businesses. It’s due to pass two-thirds of UK premises – around 19 million premises – by the end of Spring 2014, at least 18 months ahead of the original timetable.1
The investment was welcomed by Mark Winnington, Staffordshire County Council’s cabinet member for economy and infrastructure.
He said: “It is pleasing to see that even more Staffordshire people and businesses will benefit from access to super-fast broadband next Spring thanks to BT’s investment. This will complement the work they will be doing with us to boost access across the county – improving access and availability for everyone.”
Openreach, BT’s local network business, is primarily deploying fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) technology, where the fibre runs from the exchange to a local roadside cabinet. In addition to download speeds of up to 80Mbps, FTTC also delivers upload speeds of up to 20Mbps2 — and could deliver even faster speeds in the future.
Openreach has also started to make fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) technology, where the fibre runs all the way to the home or business, commercially available on demand3 in certain areas where fibre broadband has been deployed, and plans to expand access in due course. FTTP-on-demand offers the top current download speed of 330Mbps2.
According to the regulator Ofcom, the current average UK residential broadband download speed is 14.7Mbps.
Fibre broadband at home means everyone in the family can do their own thing online, all at the same time, whether it’s downloading music in minutes or watching catch-up TV; streaming HD or 3D movies in the few minutes it takes to make popcorn; or posting photos and videos to social networking sites in seconds. Fibre improves the quality of online experiences and supports exciting new developments in internet services.
The benefits are also considerable for businesses, which can do much more in far less time. Firms can speed up file and data transfers, collaborate with colleagues and customers on conference or video calls or swap their hardware and expensive software licenses for files, processing power and software from cloud computing. Staff can work as effectively from home as they would in the office.
Unlike other companies, Openreach offers fibre broadband access to all service providers on an open, wholesale basis, underpinning a competitive market. For further information on Openreach’s fibre broadband programme visit www.superfast-openreach.co.uk
ENDS
Notes to editors
1 BT’s deployment plans are subject to an acceptable environment for investment.
2 These are the top wholesale speeds available from Openreach to all service providers; speeds offered by service providers may vary.
3 Openreach will levy an installation charge for FTTP on demand. It will be up to service providers to decide whether they pass that on to businesses or consumers wishing to use the product.
Due to the current network topography, and the economics of deployment, it is likely that some premises within selected exchange areas will not initially be able to access fibre-based broadband. Openreach is considering alternative solutions for these locations.
