BT will invest a further £50 million into its commercial fibre broadband programme over the next three years. The funds, which are in addition to the more than £3 billion already committed to deploying fibre broadband , will benefit more than 30 cities, helping to make high speed broadband available to more than 400,000 additional premises.
Mike Galvin, MD Network Investment at Openreach said: “Our fibre programme is going extremely well with our engineers connecting homes and businesses across the UK. Some city areas have proved challenging in the past but we are returning to those and will pass hundreds of thousands of additional premises with fibre.
“We are reaching vast swathes of rural Britain with our public sector partners but we will upgrade these city areas under our own steam. Businesses in cities already have access to ultra-fast speeds but fibre will give them greater choice. The UK is already ahead of its main European rivals when it comes to fibre, and is set to race ahead thanks to the BDUK plans that are already in progress across the country.”
BT’s new investment will focus on three areas:
- Enabling city cabinets that weren’t part of BT’s original commercial plans due to technical challenges or local planning restrictions
- Deploying fibre to cabinets to serve multi-dwelling units such as apartment blocks
- Laying further fibre – including ‘Fibre-to-the-Premises’ technology – to new build sites in cities.
