Superfast fibre broadband

Today’s the day! We’ve just announced that we’re going to make fibre broadband available to a further 98 exchange areas – covering more than 800,000 additional homes and businesses.

The new list covers exchanges all over the country – from Sandown on the Isle of Wight to Oban on the west coast of Scotland. If all goes to plan these exchanges should be ready for action by late 2013. Check out our where and when map to see if your exchange is one of the lucky ones.

Over 10 million homes already have access to fibre broadband and today’s news brings us another step closer to our goal of making it available to two-thirds of the UK by the end of Spring 2014. And hopefully we won't stop there. We’re working with BDUK and local government and communities to try and give as many people as possible access to the benefits of fibre broadband.

Our fibre upload speeds are the fastest in the UK, meaning large video and data files can be sent almost instantly and hi-resolution photos posted online in seconds. It’s a real game-changer and is set to revolutionise the way we use the internet.

Our fibre rollout is gathering pace and we've just smashed through the 10 million mark – months ahead of schedule!

We'd planned to make superfast broadband available to 10 million homes by the end of 2012, so to hit that target in May is amazing. It just shows what a great job the planners and engineers – including the hundreds of extra engineers we've taken on - are doing to upgrade exchanges and cabinets up and down the country.

It all means we're well on track to reach two-thirds of the UK by end Spring 2014. More than 60 internet providers are already trialling or offering superfast broadband for homes or for businesses, and you can check the status of exchanges near you using our interactive rollout map.

It's a massive investment - which could top £2.5billion - but we think it's well worth it. Superfast fibre will boost the UK economy and help kick-start the creation of tens of thousands of new jobs, with small businesses in particular benefiting from the much faster speeds – now up to 80MBit/s for fibre to the cabinet.

And we're not stopping at two-thirds of the UK. We believe, with a bit of help, we can make superfast broadband available to 90 per cent of the country, making the UK a European leader in superfast broadband. We're already working in partnership with BDUK to extend access to more remote areas, not included on the original rollout plans.

Stand back because we're preparing to double our broadband speeds.

From 10 April, superfast will be even faster, with fibre to the cabinet rising to 80Mbit/s download, and up to 20Mbit/s upload – the fastest widely available to consumers in the UK.

We expect our communications provider customers to start selling this service from mid April onwards, so talk to your provider about getting a no-hassle upgrade now.

As you know, we've been busy enabling exchanges and rolling out the new superfast network for the past year, and well over seven million homes and businesses now have access to it. That means we're on track to make superfast fibre broadband available to two-thirds of the UK by the end of Spring 2014.

Our fibre roll-out has hit a major milestone in Cornwall. Around 66,000 Cornish premises – a quarter of all homes and businesses in the region – can now get superfast broadband from 35 telephone exchanges.

The exchanges cover a huge area, from Penzance in the west to Torpoint in the east and Newquay in the north. By the end of March we should have hit the 90,000 mark and we still hope to give at least 80% of premises in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly access to superfast fibre by end Spring 2014.

One company already benefitting is Boutique Retreats – which offers luxury self-catering holidays in St Agnes. Owner Philippa Barton described the new service as "incredible – totally brilliant", and added: "We recently invested in a new website and now all the features – such as the online booking and videos – are running at peak performance."

The latest ISP Review reader survey, which digs into people's attitudes to broadband and how this affects home buying, has been published, and the results make for very interesting reading.

A massive 80% of people would be put off buying a new home if it didn't have a good broadband connection – up from 69% a year ago. At the same time, 57% would pay more for a house with superfast broadband – and here superfast is described as anything over 25Mbit/s.

If you're thinking of buying a brand new home, check out our list of new housing developments able to get superfast fibre broadband.

With a 300Mbit/s pure fibre download speed in the pipeline, we're going to make homebuyers – and sellers – delighted!

We've just finished a successful fibre to the premise (FTTP) trial which is set to transform the UK's broadband landscape. The results (from St Agnes in Cornwall) mean we'll soon be able to offer FTTP on demand to homes and businesses that want the fastest broadband speeds available.

Before, it looked like an either/or situation for fibre – you'd either be in a fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) or FTTP area, but the new on demand service will mean more people can tap into FTTP broadband speeds of 100Mbit/s download and 30Mbit/s upload – with an amazing 300Mbit/s on the horizon.

The new solution takes advantage of the fibre we've already deployed between the exchange and the cabinet – extending it to homes and business as required – so it could be available anywhere in our fibre footprint.

We thought a great initiation for a new engineer, Martin Broad, would be to send him down to a remote Cornish island to get it connected. And St Michael's Mount is so remote that he had to check tide times so that he didn't get cut off from the mainland!

All hooked up now, the area's gone from end user speeds of 3Mbit/s to 40Mbit/s, and we're aiming to have 90,000 Cornish premises passed by the end of March – tides permitting.

We're asking residents and landlords to register for a pilot scheme that aims to upgrade the connection to their apartment building, so it's ready for superfast fibre broadband. We've set a target of around 1,000 buildings in our fibre rollout areas to take part.

Once a building is hooked up, it'll give people access to a pure fibre connection – all the way from the exchange. Our Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) technology can deliver superfast broadband speeds of up to 100Mbit/s, and the option of an amazing 300Mbit/s download speed is coming in spring. These will be the fastest commercially available speeds in the UK for a residential connection.

It all hinges on tracking down the appropriate individuals and companies with the authority to grant permission for us to start work on the building. But by letting both landlords and residents register their interest, residents can push for superfast broadband – and landlords get a chance to make their building more attractive to future potential residents.

It looks like apartment residents in Canary Wharf could be the first to benefit – and we're in the process of drumming up demand on the streets right now.

We weren't just breaking out the party poppers and bubbly to celebrate Christmas this year – we also passed the 7 million mark for the number of homes and businesses that can now access our superfast fibre broadband network. Festive times indeed!

We've just added another 178 exchanges to the fibre rollout which means that once these and previously announced exchanges have been enabled – most of which will be completed by the end of 2012 – we will have pretty much completed 80% of our commercial footprint, And everything's still on track to reach two-thirds of the UK by end Spring 2014.

Just saw a video of Microsoft's latest vision of the future. Exciting and scary at the same time. Unbelievable how much information we're going to have at our fingertips – and a lot of that will rely on fibre connections, like the new superfast network we're building in the UK.

Wow. We're doing so well that we're likely to reach our rollout target a whole year earlier than planned. That means two-thirds of the UK will have access to superfast fibre broadband by end Spring 2014 – instead of the original 2015. Talk about superfast!

And to help with the ongoing work, we're also taking on an extra 520 engineers. That has to be good news for everyone just now.

Our CEO, Liv Garfield, just announced a triple whammy on the superfast front:

1. A pure fibre connection (fibre to the premises, or FTTP) has been launched in six exchange areas (Ashford in Middlesex, Bradwell Abbey in Milton Keynes, Highams Park in North London, Chester South, St Austell and York)
2. We'll be able to deliver 300Mbit/s download speeds during 2012 – that's staggering, and way beyond anything else available in the UK right now.
3. The fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) version will double in speed early next year – from 40Mbit/s to 80MBit/s – which should be enough to handle almost anything you throw at it.

There's a description of how fibre works and the difference between FTTP and FTTC here »

Talk about a hit and run! It's our job to ensure our people stay connected 24/7, 365 days of the year. So when a green street cabinet in Aylesbury was smashed by a car in the early hours of the morning and left lying in a driveway further up the street, we had to leap into action.

These kinds of things can wipe out the phone services of nearly 300 homes and businesses, so our Access Operations Centre (AOC) in Bristol immediately sent out a disaster recovery trailer. This is a new portable cabinet that means we can get a temporary service up and running quickly, and keep people connected until the network is fully restored. In this case we had everyone on the temporary service in less than 12 hours.