Jul
17
2011
BT is one of the leading companies in UK that provides telephone, broadband internet and subscription television services. Lately the company announced that it will expand over 60 exchanges across the UK that will support fiber optic cable as part of its around 2.5 billion pounds program to provide access to quicker broadband services. With these exchanges, two-thirds of homes are expected to be connected in the UK. Even though most of the exchanges will be running by the end of this year, the remaining few are expected to go live by 2012.
According to BT, five million homes in the UK will have access to superfast broadband by the end June. This indicates that BT is not far from its goal of reaching its target of connecting 10 million homes with fiber-optic cables to the internet by the end of 2012. It is also aiming to provide fast broadband connections to more than two-thirds of UK homes by the end of 2015.
This initiative is currently the biggest civil engineering project in UK and is also the largest single commercial venture ever taken. The fiber-optic cables that are implemented have a download speed up to forty mbps. The cable is much faster in providing speed and easy-to-install compare to copper phone lines therefore, it’s efficient and faster. This is sufficient speed for a user to watch high definition videos on the internet. Even then BT is planning to double the speed by next year.
The company is also experimenting with new technology which will help people living in remote areas receive broadband internet for the first time. This experiment is being conducted with wireless technology (broadband) on the Isle of Bute located in Scotland. It will be in areas of white space which are bits of spectrum in the TV-oriented 400-800 megahertz band that are left alone by broadcasters so that it doesn’t interfere with transmissions.
The Chief Executive for BT Openreach, Liv Garfield said that last 10% of UK will not be easy to reach with fixed line fast broadband internet so the company is working hard testing other technologies. Even though it’s still early for the company to evaluate the effectiveness of this technology, BT hopes that the technology tested would be the solution for areas that are slow- spots and not- spots. Also according to the company, customers in live trial will get their wireless connection to the internet linked to an exchange building located at Kilchattan Bay. This is will provide broadband internet access through a dedicated radio link to the mainland.
BT is also going to apply for new grants from the Government to start putting more fiber-optic cables in rural areas. Also the government itself is planning to invest fifty million pounds to make broadband networks available in rural counties like Somerset in south-west of England, Wiltshire formerly known as County of Wilts, Devonshire and Norfolk. All the effort put in by BT and the government of UK shows that it is working hard to provide internet connectivity all over the UK. So internet will soon be available at every door step in UK!
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