BTOpenreach has officially confirmed three rural telephone exchanges that have been shortlisted to take part in a unique Fibre Only Exchange (FOX) trial. The project was revealed earlier this month (full details) but BT later withdrew the announcement "due to an internal error", which resulted in the wrong locations being listed.

The trial aims to replace the chosen rural exchange's "copper-based products" with services based off their latest ultrafast 100Mbps+ Fibre-to-the-Premises ( FTTP ) and "Ethernet fibre network" broadband ISP technologies. Both types of network will be built and operated within Trial phases.

BT FOX Candidate Locations
* DEDDINGTON (OXFORDSHIRE, SMDD) [NGA Handover: BANBURY]
* PICKMERE (CHESHIRE, MRPIC) [NGA Handover: NORTHWICH]
* SUTTON (CHESHIRE, MRSUT) [NGA Handover: MACCLESFIELD]

Each telephone exchange also has an NGA Handover Exchange assigned, which BT claims would "be the serving head-end location"; technical jargon (or pidgin English if you prefer) for a master exchange that takes responsibility for processing and distributing the service.

Communication Providers (ISPs) have been given until Friday 9th September 2011 to "nominate [their] preferred exchange". We'll report back as soon as BT confirms the results next month.