UPD BT Reveal Next 73 UK Locations for its Superfast Fibre Broadband Rollout
BTOpenreach, which provides UK ISPs with access to BT’s local and national telecoms infrastructure, has today announced the next batch of 73 new telephone exchange upgrades for its superfast ‘up to’ 40-80Mbps Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) and 100-300Mbps Fibre-to-the-Premises ( FTTP ) based internet access technologies.
The new list (phases 9b), when taken by itself, covers 705,000 homes and businesses (150,400 premises of which are in Scotland). The majority of these exchanges have been given a Ready for Service (RFS) date of Spring 2013 and, once enabled, should bring BT’s total superfast broadband coverage up to almost 16 Million UK premises.
BTs FTTx TELEPHONE EXCHANGE Upgrades (Phase 9b)
ABERDEEN NORTH – Aberdeen City
ACOCKS GREEN – West Midlands
ALVASTON – Derbyshire
AYR – South Ayrshire
BARROW-IN-FURNESS – Cumbria
BONESS – Falkirk
BRADFORD-ON-AVON – Wiltshire
BRIXHAM – Devon
BROXBURN – West Lothian
BUXTON; DERBYSHIRE – Derbyshire
CANFORD CLIFFS – Dorset
CHIPPING SODBURY – Gloucestershire
CLAUGHTON – Merseyside
CRADLEY HEATH – West Midlands
CULLOMPTON – Devon
DAVIDSONS MAINS – City of Edinburgh
ECCLES – Greater Manchester
ELLESMERE PORT – Cheshire
FALKIRK – Falkirk
FISHPONDS – City of Bristol
FLEETWOOD – Lancashire
FORFAR – Angus
FRASERBURGH – Aberdeenshire
GLASGOW KIRKINTILLOCH – East Dunbartonshire
GLASGOW MARYHILL – Glasgow City
GLASGOW PAISLEY – Renfrewshire
GLASTONBURY – Somerset
GOUROCK – Inverclyde
GRANGEMOUTH – Falkirk
GREAT YARMOUTH TOWN – Norfolk
HEBDEN BRIDGE – West Yorkshire
HIGHBURY – West Midlands
HIGHCLIFFE – Dorset
HORWICH – Greater Manchester
INVERNESS – Highland
KINGSWINFORD – West Midlands
KIRKBY IN ASHFIELD – Nottinghamshire
LARBERT – Falkirk
LEIGH; GREATER MANCHESTER – Greater Manchester
LLANELLI – Sir Gaerfyrddin – Carmarthenshire
LONGRIDGE – Lancashire
LOW FELL – Tyne and Wear
MANNINGHAM – West Yorkshire
MELTON MOWBRAY – Leicestershire
MERSTHAM – Surrey
MOTHERWELL – North Lanarkshire
PAIGNTON – Devon
PARKSTONE – Dorset
PORT TALBOT – Castell-nedd Port Talbot – Neath Port Talbot
POULTON; LANCASHIRE – Lancashire
PRIORY – West Midlands
RAVENHILL – Abertawe – Swansea
RHYL – Sir Ddinbych – Denbighshire
SANDIACRE – Nottinghamshire
SEDGLEY – West Midlands
SHAFTESBURY – Dorset
SHARROW – South Yorkshire
SIDMOUTH – Devon
ST ANNE’S – Lancashire
ST. BUDEAUX – Devon
ST. MARYCHURCH – Devon
STANECASTLE – North Ayrshire
STREET – Somerset
SWANSEA – Abertawe – Swansea
TROON – South Ayrshire
VENTNOR – Isle of Wight
WADSLEY BRIDGE – South Yorkshire
WEST WIGSTON – Leicestershire
WHITCHURCH;SHROPSHIRE – Gwynedd – Gwynedd
WILLENHALL – West Midlands
WOBURN SANDS – Bedfordshire
WOLVERHAMPTON – West Midlands
WORKINGTON – Cumbria
Each of the telephone exchanges mentioned above will support BT’s FTTC technology, although at this point it’s not clear whether any of those listed will also be enabled for the operators fastest fibre optic FTTP service (we hope to have an answer shortly). A number of UK ISPs are already offering BT-based superfast FTTC broadband services, although BT-Infinity and PlusNet are still two of the cheapest.
BT is investing £2.5bn into its national UK deployment of fibre optic broadband services, which aims to reach 40% of UK (10 Million premises) by the end of 2012 and 66% in 2014. BT could potentially push this coverage up to 90% but that will be heavily dependent upon how much public funding they receive via the governments Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office budget (£530m + £100m Urban Broadband Fund and £100m of EU money).
Previous BT-FTTC/FTTP UK Exchange Rollout Updates
* March 2009 – 29 (FTTC) Exchanges
* July 2009 – 69 (FTTC) Exchanges
* January 2010 – 63 (FTTC) Exchanges
* March 2010 – 303 (FTTC) Exchanges
* September 2010 – 159 (FTTC/FTTP) Exchanges
* January 2011 – 41 (FTTC/FTTP) Exchanges
* April 2011 – 156 (FTTC/FTTP) Exchanges
* June 2011 – 66 (FTTC/FTTP) Exchanges
* December 2011 – 73 (FTTC) Exchanges
UPDATE 12:17pm
BT informs us that today’s new has “nearly completed the announcement of our commercial footprint of approx. two thirds of the UK premises by the end of 2014“. The operator has also promised to release another batch of exchange upgrades “in the summer“.
It’s also worth reminding readers that BT’s FTTP service will be available “on demand” (FTTP on Demand) in all FTTC enabled areas by Spring 2013. This will be a premium product offering very fast speeds and will be aimed at small to medium businesses (not the mass market), although home users should be able to purchase related packages (expect them to be pricey).
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and Linkedin.
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🙁 Very disappointed that my local exchange is miss out again, the rest of my council had FTTC ready, why isn’t my exchange not doing it ? Is it BT decision or the local council decision ?
Very annoying!
Why only 73 exchanges ? BT surely can do 200 exchanges ? As it seem small amount of exchanges is rather poor and too slow to catch up! Not a speedy roll out BT.
Again no Warrington! THis is beyond a joke now!
mine isn’t on the list 🙁 Nevermind, i’ll stick with cable for the time being. They don’t seem to be doing the upgrade quickly, before they were doing 300 and 200 exchanges during a 4-6 months now its usually around 70 exchanges.
finally my exchange will be done but whether my cabinent will be is anyone guess
Just added the exchange numbers up, when these exchanges are finally activated that brings the total to 1032, thats somewhat short of the 5000+ exchanges BT have.
Adam – it’s nothing to do with size of exchanges.
Correction
Adam – it’s nothing to do with the number of exchanges.
I know, just did the maths regarding real world exchange coverage for the entire uk.
It just means those 4000 odd exchanges dont cover much of the population.
Why is BT reduced to around 70 exchanges in every 3-4 months compare to last time usually 200-300 exchanges ? Are BT start to slow as a snail roll out ?
I give up and stick to Cable broadband with Virgin Media 120 Mbps / 12 Mbps
Does anyone else notice a complete lack of the South/South East?
Wow, finally my Exchange is listed.
However I doubt they deploy it here. My exchange covers a large suburban area, and then my village which is connected by a 1km road free of housing. So basically my village of roughly 10,000 people is of a decent size but that long stretch of road is going to make it costly for them to deploy, so I doubt they do.
BT clearly don’t know Shropshire. WHITCHURCH;SHROPSHIRE is not in Gwynedd, it’s in Shropshire.
Oh to see the poor engineer try to whack that into his sat nav eh 😉
Martin Pitt, why is BT is always ingorned largest Shropshire of FTTC ? Very very poor indeed! BT say good news Shropshire will upgrade to 21CN but no ones want that!, we want FTTC!
@Phil
You say no one wants ADSL2+, which is what comes from the 21CN upgrade, however the evidence is clear that more people at the moment want this than want the much faster speeds (or at least higher prices) of FTTC. That may change in the future but the reality is at present is that you’ll almost certainly get more people in a given area opting for ADSL2+ than for FTTC.
Missed out again,2 more in Sheffield but not mine…off to sulk now.
Once again, not a single exchange from the Lincolnshire area mentioned. 2nd Largest county in the country and BT are still not doing an even spread of enablement around the UK. BT also appear to the be slowing, typical if you ask me. What a let down BT!!!
Presumably this is down to a relative lack of people in the county, dispersed too thinly for it to make economic sense? In which case BDUK ought to be making inroads at some point. M
Still no Leeds? Sheesh…
Leeds just got in on the £100m pie for a superfast broadband city so I don’t think there will be much of a problem here at all.