Apr
6
2011

Copper boosts BT broadband coverage

An article by telecomseurope.net

BT is ramping its copper lines in a bid to offer up to 20Mbps broadband to the bulk of UK homes by the year-end.

The operator’s Wholesale division has already upgraded 1,017 exchanges to its Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) ADSL2+ service, and is adding 30,000 lines per week as it seeks to cover 80% of UK households by end December.

However, while the upgraded copper service is available in 15.5 million homes, just 2.25 million users have signed up to date.

The operator claims to have the UK’s largest Ethernet network, with 1,000 live fiber nodes operational so far. Expansion work should see the figure climb to almost 1,100 by year-end. The firm has now passed four million homes with fiber, as part of a drive to cover two thirds of the UK market by 2015.

“BT’s Ethernet deployment has advanced from an early adopter to a mainstream purchase,” Cameron Rejali, BT Wholesale’s managing director of products states.