Superfast Cornwall Confirm 62000 Premises Can Get BT FTTP Broadband

A promotional Twitter account for all things Cornish has claimed that Cornwall now has the “highest level of FTTP (Fibre-to-the-Premises) coverage in the UK“, with the service allegedly being “available” (premises passed) to around 62,000 local homes and businesses, and it’s all thanks to the joint £132m EU and BT “Big Build” Superfast Cornwall scheme.

The Superfast Cornwall project recently confirmed that BT’s “high-speed fibre optic broadband” (FTTC/P) network was now available to 90% of the local population (here), with 50,000 customers being either connected to the service or having placed an order for it, and the aim is to reach 95% by the end of 2015.

But most of this deployment has been dominated by BT’s slower ‘up to’ 80Mbps hybrid Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) service and trying to get information out of them concerning their FTTP (330Mbps capable) availability is like trying to squeeze blood from a stone. BT simply won’t discuss it, which might be down to the general abandonment of their original plans for a native FTTP roll-out (here) and the seeming failure to make Fibre-on-Demand (FoD) into an affordable alternative.

However some FTTP/B deployments are still taking place, often as part of the state aid fuelled Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) schemes, and Cornwall has long been known to have a greater level of FTTP availability than most, but until now we didn’t know by how much.

At the last count in January 2013 is was revealed that Openreach had some 95,000 FTTP premises passed across the United Kingdom, including 7,000 subscribers, but we don’t know where that figure stands today. So, if we assume that not much has changed, then Cornwall would arguably remain BT’s only FTTP concentration of any real note and is likely to remain so for quite a while. Credits to Thinkbroadband for spotting the tweet.