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BT hints at faster fibre-based broadband

Amid concerns over the UK’s broadband infrastructure, BT has said they will discuss investment into a faster broadband network.

Ian Livingston, head of BT’s retail division told the Financial Times that the company are discussing the merits of deploying more fibre, from the telephone exchange up to the street cabinet or home.

Government minister Stephen Timms recently spoke on the issue of faster broadband at a reception held by the Broadband Stakeholders Group (BSG), the government’s leading advisory group on Broadband.  He warned about the need for a roadmap to move to a faster broadband network, otherwise the UK faces falling behind in economic competitiveness.  Other nations have been quick to make super fast broadband available using optical-fibre, the preferred choice for next generation networks (NGN).

BT has for the most part said that deployment of more fibre to replace copper based networks was not economically viable, and would cost somewhere in the region of 10 to 15 billion pounds.  Mr Timms has however hinted that investment support may be made available and along with the BSG, would help to iron out any regulatory concerns.

Mr Livingston told the Financial Times: “BT remains very interested in further expanding the speed of access for customers, whether that be through faster copper, fibre to the home, fibre to the cabinet.”

BT’s 21st Century Network (21CN) is set to offer speeds of up 24Mbps from next year but net speed gains will not be that much greater for DSL users, primarily because copper is still used between a telephone exchange and a customer’s location.  Replacing at least some of this with fibre will help to improve overall broadband speeds.