October 14, 2009 by Matt Thomas
British Telecom is extending its super-fast broadband services, making the 100 megabits per second service available to double the number of people. The extension of the ‘fibre to premise’ service will make super-fast internet available to in the region of 2.5 million households. This is all coming as part of BT’s £1.5 billion pound investment in broadband networks through which they hope to connect 10 million homes to their fast broadband service by 2012.
However, BT has admitted that most of these connections will not technically be ‘fibre to the premise’ connections, rather ‘fibre to the cabinet’ connections where fibreoptic cables are hooked up to junction boxes on roads. ‘Fibre to the premesis’ connections are likely to be installed mainly in urban areas.
The new BT networks will be offered on a wholesale basis, which means that competitors like Sky and Carphone Warehouse will eventually be able to lease these high speed connections from BT and offer their own services through them.
The government has made high speed internet access a priority over the last few months, with the Digital Britain report even going so far as to pledge universal broadband access, at speeds of at least two megabits per second, across the UK by 2012.
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