Telecoms operator BT has this week officially confirmed that 20,000 homes and businesses in the digitally isolated town of Milton Keynes (Buckinghamshire) will benefit from superfast broadband services when the Bradwell Abbey exchange is upgraded to support Fibre-to-the-Cabinet ( FTTC ) technology by the end of 2012 (it's already trialling the superior 100Mbps+ FTTP fibre optic service).

Today's news follows confirmation earlier this month that BT had begun offering local firms a free trial (here) of its new 100Mbps+ (rising to 300Mbps in 2012) ultrafast fibre optic Fibre-to-the-Premise ( FTTP ) internet access services. At the time there was no mention of either the slower FTTC service (up to 40Mbps, rising to 80Mbps next year) or home coverage, although it was assumed to follow.

BT has now elaborated to confirm that 11,000 homes and businesses are already "within reach" of its FTTP technology at Bradwell Abbey, although apparently only 9,600 premises "will be able to receive [the FTTP] service" :confused: . The remaining 10,700 will be served by FTTC .


According to BT, some 95% of premises served by the Bradwell Abbey exchange will now be able to receive its superfast broadband services. That's one of the highest exchange coverage's for FTTx technology in the country.

This also puts a new, if not entirely unexpected, spin on the recent dispute between Virgin Media and BT (here). The two were unable to reach agreement on physical access, which prevented Virgin from being able to upgrade the BT managed cable to support faster digital broadband and TV services.