UK ISP BT Retail has today announced the launch of a new nationwide survey - 'Race to Infinity' - to gauge how much demand there is for its 'up to' 40Mbps FTTC and 100Mbps FTTP fibre optic based broadband internet access services. Communities that show the most demand ("hot spots") could find themselves appearing on BT's future rollout plans, including previously non-economically viable exchanges.

The survey is also running alongside a competition that has been designed help attract entries; BT Retail are promising funds, if needed, to help enable five exchanges with the highest demand by early 2012 at the latest. This appears to be in addition to another scheme that BT launched in September, where ISPs were given the power to nominate several telephone exchanges (maximum of 6) for fibre optic broadband upgrades (original news).

At present BT are investing £2.5bn over the next few years so that 40% of the UK population (10 million homes) can get its "super-fast" Next Generation Access (NGA) fibre optic products by 2012; reaching 66% in 2015. By the end of this year BT will have brought its initial 'up to' 40Mb FTTC services within reach of 4 million premises.


BT claims that its new survey is "the first of its kind", although this is only true so far as NGA fibre optic broadband services go. During the early broadband rollout years (2001-2006) there were many such surveys conducted, albeit somewhat regionally focused.

The new survey, which is displaying the results in public on its special website (could be useful for rivals that are able to deploy with lower subscriber count requirements), could also see commercially viable exchanges, which are already likely to be part of the operators eventual deployment, brought forward to the front of BT's rollout (assuming that demand is deemed to be higher than expected).


BT has promised to engage with any community that expresses a high level of demand (75% of premises expressing interest) so that all avenues are explored to see if fibre broadband can be brought to their area. Communities that fail to win the competition but manage to gather 75% of possible votes for their exchange will still be engaged with by BT.

However the incumbent telecoms operators admitted that most telephone exchanges covering the "Final Third" of UK homes and businesses would probably still need government support if they are to be reached (i.e. public money).

The survey itself will only run until 31st December 2010, which isn't much time to fully promote the website and we think BT should have extended their deadline until the end of March 2011. It's also unclear how much effort the operator will put into promoting this survey because it will need a bigger push to get noticed by everybody.

The BT Race to Infinity Survey Website:
http://www.bt.com/racetoinfinity

UPDATE 12:49pm

Forgot to mention that at least 1,000 premises in any given area with 75% expressing interest will be in with the chance of an upgrade. Some ISPs, such as Rutland Telecom and Fibrestream UK, have been able to upgrade areas with just 40 premises expressing an interest. That, my dear government, is part of the reason why smaller ISPs deserve a level playfield.

BT's scheme probably cannot help most of the rural deprived or remote communities, except perhaps an unexpectedly lucky few. So what's new?

UPDATE 2:36pm

Hopefully BT will update the website at some point to offer a lite HTML or FLASH version option since, as they appear to have forgotten, those in areas with only slow broadband or dialup access cannot access and load the site because of its rich media content. On a dialup link you have to wait quite awhile before it's possible to proceed.

UPDATE 5th October 2010

Apparently those on slower connections should be redirected to an HTML version of the site. However if you'd rather not wait then here's the direct URL.

http://www.racetoinfinity.bt.com/html-version