Communications provider BT has announced a significant new investment in Northern Ireland (UK), which aims to raise the number of telephone lines connected up to its superfast 40Mbps FTTC broadband cabinets from 54% to 88%. Come March 2012 BT expects N.I. to have more fibre deployed than most major European countries aspire to roll-out by 2015.

Precise details about how much, when and where have yet to be revealed. BT merely states that the cash is part of their existing £2.5 billion fibre roll-out in the UK and it will provide more than 215,000 premises (N.I. homes and businesses) with access to "fibre broadband".

This latest network installation complements other network projects that BT is currently working on, including the deployment of FTTC to 100% of street cabinets in Derry City as part of BT's UK City of Culture 2013 partnership (here).


Some 200 existing BT employees and third party contractors, as well as an additional 60 new recruits, will be used to help roll the new service out to homes and businesses. The roll-out of this latest phase will begin immediately and further details should be announced on a rolling basis and published via www.nibroadband.com.

BT Fibre-to-the-Cabinet ( FTTC ) technology delivers a fast fibre optic link to the operators street level cabinets, while the remaining connection (between cabinets and homes) is done using VDSL2 (similar to current ADSL broadband but faster over short distances) through existing copper cable; FTTC will initially deliver speeds of up to 40Mbps (uploads should reach up to 10-15Mbps).