BT Commit £20m to Rollout FTTP Ultrafast Broadband in Northern Ireland

BT has today unveiled a £20 million commercial investment for Northern Ireland, which will enable them to deploy “ultrafast broadband” services to a further 140,000 homes and businesses by March 2019. This will “predominantly” involve their 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network.

The operator tends to define “ultrafast broadband” as offering speeds of greater than 100Mbps and the use of the word “predominantly” leads us to suspect that some hybrid fibre ‘up to’ 330Mbps capable G.fast technology may also be involved. The announcement also suggests that the main focus of this work will be on urban areas, such as towns (i.e. the easy low hanging fruit).

This investment complements the current joint investment programmes that BT already has underway with the Northern Ireland government, and when combined, they suggests that it will result in “nearly a quarter” of all premises having access to ultrafast broadband.

Mairead Meyer, BT NI’s Managing Director of Networks, said:

“We’re delighted to be investing at this significant level, delivering against our local ambition to futureproof our Northern Ireland infrastructure and rank favourably amongst the best fibre networks in Europe.

Through our current investment programmes, 25 per cent of homes and businesses in Northern Ireland are scheduled to have access to ultrafast broadband by March 2019.These investments are underpinning Northern Ireland’s internet economy and society, and bringing an online experience like never before to consumers and organisations.

We’ve been sharing our fibre broadband vision with key stakeholders and today’s announcement is ultimately about driving choice and competition in this market because the network is available on an open wholesale basis to all broadband providers, meaning households and businesses will benefit from a choice of services, competitive pricing and products.”

As part of this BT intends, over the next 10 months, to recruit 42 apprentices and graduates, who’ll undertake a variety of roles in designing, planning and building the new “full fibre” network. The roll-out is set to begin immediately and further details will apparently be published on this website: www.nibroadband.com.

It’s worth pointing out that the UK Government has also previously signed a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to secure the support of their 10 MPs in Parliament. As part of that Northern Ireland can expect to receive £150 million to “help provide ultra-fast broadband” (here), although at present this is still being bogged down by one of the region’s all too common political deadlocks over wider issues.

NOTE: At present around 31%+ of Northern Ireland can already connect via a 100Mbps+ broadband connection (largely due to Virgin Media’s network) and the coverage of “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) is around 84%+ (here).