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Articles for Category Tag - Openreach

Oxfordshire UK Extends BT Fibre Broadband Rollout via New Contract

9th February, 2015 (5 Comments)

The state aid supported Better Broadband for Oxfordshire project, which is working with BT to extend superfast broadband access (24Mbps+) to 90% of the county by the end of 2015, has today signed a £5.1m extension contract that will expand this coverage to another 6,500 local premises.

Rural Herefordshire Villages Celebrate Arrival of 330Mbps FTTP Broadband

9th February, 2015 (4 Comments)

Several remote rural villages in Herefordshire (England), which include Llangarron and the nearby villages of Llancloudy and Llangrove, look set to become some of the first in the county to benefit from the arrival of a new ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network that will offer top speeds of 330Mbps (Megabits per second).

Gov Helps Put 2 Million Extra UK Premises in Reach of Superfast Broadband

9th February, 2015 (11 Comments)

The Government’s £1.7bn state aid fuelled Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) project, which is predominantly working with BT in order to make fixed line superfast broadband (24Mbps+) connections available to 95% of people in the United Kingdom by 2017, has announced that its efforts have helped to put the service within reach of 2 million premises (total UK coverage of approximately 80%).

Openreach UK Testing Faster Harmonised Broadband and Phone Repairs

6th February, 2015 (0 Comments)

At the end of last month BTOpenreach, which looks after BT’s national telecoms network in the United Kingdom, revealed that they had launched a Proof of Concept trial with ISPs to test a new, faster and simpler engineer repair service for broadband and phone lines. At the time there wasn’t enough meat for a news story but now we have more detail.

Amplifiers or SuperVector Could Boost UK FTTC Broadband Speeds and Reach

5th February, 2015 (13 Comments)

All the recent talk of BT’s plan to roll-out ultrafast G.fast broadband technology from 2016/17 (here and here), which could deliver speeds of up to 500Mbps to “most homes“, might be overlooking the fact that there’s still room to improve the existing ‘up to’ 80Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) service via special amplifiers and other methods.

UPDATE Sckipio Claims to Double the Distance of Ultrafast G.fast Broadband

5th February, 2015 (14 Comments)

Israel-based semiconductor company Sckipio, which last year became the first manufacturer to release commercial hardware for the next generation hybrid-fibre G.fast (ITU G.9701) broadband technology that BT is also hoping to roll-out in the United Kingdom from 2016/17 (details), claims to have already doubled the technology’s reach.

Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire UK Sign Extended Fibre Broadband Deal

3rd February, 2015 (12 Comments)

The state aid supported CSW Broadband project has signed a new £10.73m Phase 2 Broadband Delivery UK contract with BT, which will help a further 17,000+ premises to receive “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) and push total coverage to “nearly” 94%. But worryingly the project will not complete until summer 2019, well behind the Government’s end of 2017 target.

Digital Scotland Unveils Next 43 Areas for BT Fibre Broadband Upgrades

3rd February, 2015 (13 Comments)

The Digital Scotland project has today revealed the next batch of 43 locations (54,000 premises), including parts of the remote Outer Hebrides, Mull and the Isle of Bute, that will benefit from their on-going £410m project with BT to ensure that “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) services are available to 85% of premises in Scotland by the end of 2015 and 95% by the end of 2017.

List of BT Exchanges Set for a Spring 21CN WBC Broadband Upgrade

2nd February, 2015 (24 Comments)

Interestingly BT appears to have informed UK ISPs that they plan to upgrade a large swathe of predominantly smaller telephone exchanges, many of which are in rural areas, from their older and slower 20th Century Network (20CN) based broadband and phone platform to the latest 21CN and Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) service between April and June 2015.

BT Openreach to Stop Replacing Faulty FTTC Modems from Jan 2017

2nd February, 2015 (22 Comments)

BTOpenreach has informed Internet Service Providers (ISP) that they intend to remove their Basic Install product for Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) based “fibre broadband” lines on 1st January 2016 and, a year after that, they’ll also stop support (replacement) for consumers who suffer faulty VDSL modems.

BT Extend UK Vectoring Trials to Fix FTTC “Fibre Broadband” Speeds

30th January, 2015 (22 Comments)

BTOpenreach’s long running VDSL2 Vectoring (ITU-T G.993.5) trial, which aims to improve the performance of BT’s existing “up to” 80Mbps capable hybrid Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) superfast broadband lines by significantly reducing crosstalk interference, has been extended to 100 DSLAMs in selected areas that will benefit from the upgrade.

BT Top 7.59m Broadband Subscribers and Grow FTTC to Cover 22M Premises

30th January, 2015 (38 Comments)

BT has today published its latest results for Q4-2014 (calendar), which revealed that their retail division had added +119,000 broadband subscribers in the quarter to total 7,592,000 (up from the +88k added in Q3 and the +104k in Q2). Meanwhile almost 22 million UK premises can now access the operators “Fibre Broadband” (FTTC/P) network.

BT Confirm UK Rollout of 1000Mbps G.Fast Ultrafast Broadband from 2016/17

30th January, 2015 (95 Comments)

The national telecoms operator, BT, has today delivered an earlier than expected surprise by announcing their intention to deploy the next generation hybrid-fibre G.fast (ITU G.9701) broadband technology across the United Kingdom from 2016/17, with “most homes” told to expect speeds of ‘up to’ 500Mbps (Megabits per second) and there’s also a “premium” option for up to 1000Mbps (the premium may come via FTTP).

Cornwall UK Confirms Growth Deal for 99% Fibre Broadband Coverage

29th January, 2015 (1 Comment)

The Government’s Minister for Rural Affairs, Dan Rogerson (LibDem), will later today launch a new Growth Deal for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly in England that will confirm the Local Authorities existing plan to push “fibre broadband” coverage from the current target of 95% to over 99%.

UPD Public Accounts Committee Still Critical of BT and BDUK Broadband Rollout

28th January, 2015 (47 Comments)

The Public Accounts Committee, which holds some responsibility for examining the Government’s public expenditure, has today hosted a third session in order to examine if any progress has been made on their prior recommendations for the joint state aid supported BT and Broadband Delivery UK rollout of superfast broadband.

BDUK Superfast Broadband Rollout is Ahead of Schedule and Made Savings

28th January, 2015 (22 Comments)

The National Audit Office has, in anticipation of today’s Public Accounts Committee event, published a useful report into its views on how effective the joint BT and Broadband Delivery UK scheme has been in terms of its costs, coverage and competition. The report finds that BT’s Phase 1 deployment is running “ahead of schedule” and BDUK predicts total savings of approximately £72m by 2017-18, which could be reinvested.

Progress in Tackling Warwickshire’s Slow Exchange Only Broadband Lines

27th January, 2015 (1 Comment)

The Government’s Broadband Delivery UK programme is increasingly starting to tackle the historic curse of BTOpenreach’s pure copper Exchange Only Lines (EOL) and the latest example of this comes from several remote rural villages in the English county of Warwickshire.