Super-Fast fibre broadband gs live in BoNe

DC13-260 September 17, 2013

Super-Fast fibre broadband goes live in BoNess

Upgrade hailed by Angus MacDonald MSP as more than 6,200 local homes and businesses set to benefit from BT's £2.5 billion roll-out

Super-fast broadband has arrived in Bo'ness, BT announced today.

Almost 4,200 homes and businesses in the town now have access to the high-speed technology and this figure will increase to more than 6,200 as engineers complete the local upgrade.

Today, the BT investment was welcomed by Angus MacDonald, MSP for Falkirk East, who described it as great news for the town. He said: Super-fast fibre broadband in Bo'ness will benefit both local residents and businesses.

Broadband is an essential part of our area's present and future. It's vital that we embrace this latest generation of technology in order for our local economy to remain competitive.

The Scottish Parliament is paying close attention to the roll out of super-fast fibre broadband and I am pleased my Falkirk East constituency is benefitting so greatly from BT's £2.5 billion fibre programme.

Bo'ness follows Falkirk, Grangemouth and Larbert, where fibre broadband is already available. Bonnybridge and Denny will also be upgraded and by the end of Spring 2014 almost 50,000 homes and businesses in the Falkirk area will be able to benefit from BT's £2.5 billion fibre programme.

Brendan Dick, BT Scotland director, said: Our roll-out of fibre broadband continues apace across Scotland with Bo'ness among the latest places to benefit. More than 1.7 million homes and businesses across the UK are already using our new fibre network. Local residents now have the opportunity to join them and find out for themselves why there's such a buzz about fibre broadband.

Whatever you're doing online, you can do it better and faster with fibre. Whether it's shopping, downloading music and video, watching TV, social networking, studying or researching homework, once you've switched to fibre you'll never look back. Outside the home, it also has huge potential for public services and city businesses.

Businesses working better with fibre tell us it's helping them in a wealth of ways, from day to day activities like downloading software, collaborating with clients and moving large data files around to big business decisions like expanding the workforce or introducing better quality IT services at less cost.

BT is not just building a national communications network fit for 21st century Britain; we're doing it at speed, making fibre broadband available to around 80,000 more premises a week.

We've always said we'd like to work with the public sector to expand the fibre footprint beyond the commercial boundaries. In Scotland we are excited to be doing exactly that through multi-million pound partnerships with the Scottish Government, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Broadband Delivery UK, local authorities and others. Alongside commercial upgrades, these ambitious projects will see 85 per cent of premises having fibre broadband by the end of 2015 and around 95 per cent by the end of 2017.

BT's fibre footprint currently passes more than 16 million UK homes and businesses. It's due to pass two-thirds of UK premises around 19 million premises by the end of Spring 2014, at least 18 months ahead of the original timetable.1

Openreach, BT's local network business, is primarily deploying fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) technology, where the fibre runs from the exchange to a local roadside cabinet. In addition to download speeds of up to 80Mbps, FTTC also delivers upload speeds of up to 20Mbps2 and could deliver even faster speeds in the future.

Openreach has also started to make fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) technology, where the fibre runs all the way to the home or business, commercially available on demand3 in certain areas where fibre broadband has been deployed, and plans to expand access in due course. FTTP-on-demand offers the top current download speed of 330Mbps2.

According to the regulator Ofcom, the current average UK residential broadband download speed is 14.7Mbps.

Fibre broadband at home means everyone in the family can do their own thing online, all at the same time, whether it's downloading music in minutes or watching catch-up TV; streaming HD or 3D movies in the few minutes it takes to make popcorn; or posting photos and videos to social networking sites in seconds.

Fibre improves the quality of online experiences and supports exciting new developments in internet services.

The benefits are also considerable for businesses, which can do much more in far less time. Firms can speed up file and data transfers, collaborate with colleagues and customers on conference or video calls or swap their hardware and expensive software licenses for files, processing power and software from cloud computing. Staff can work as effectively from home as they would in the office.

Unlike other companies, Openreach offers fibre broadband access to all service providers on an open, wholesale basis, underpinning a competitive market. For further information on Openreach's fibre broadband programme visit www.superfast-openreach.co.uk

ENDS

Notes to editors

1 BT's deployment plans are subject to an acceptable environment for investment.

2 These are the top wholesale speeds available from Openreach to all service providers; speeds offered by service providers may vary.

3 Openreach will levy an installation charge for FTTP on demand. It will be up to service providers to decide whether they pass that on to businesses or consumers wishing to use the product.

Due to the current network topography, and the economics of deployment, it is likely that some premises within selected exchange areas will not initially be able to access

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