Superfast broadband extends reach

An extra one and a half million homes will benefit from super-fast broadband by 2012, BT has said. Originally the telecoms firm said that it could only deploy so-called Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) to a million homes because of its cost. But it now believes 2.5 million homes can benefit because it will be cheaper to provide than it had first thought. A further 9 million homes will receive the slower Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) technology by 2012. Previously BT had said that it could only lay FTTP to new-build sites - with the Ebbsfleet development in Kent is its flagship site - but now it has found a way to make it more widely available. It will use existing ducts and overhead cables to bring fibre to brownfield sites as well. Potential sites will be identified by a variety of factors, including geography of the region and the topology of the network. Homes eligible for the FTTP technology will receive speeds of up to 100Mbps (megabits per second). This compares to a top speed of 40Mbps for FTTC technology.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8298382.stm