If you're still struggling to receive any form of real speed on BT's ageing copper network, you'll be happy to hear that the UK telecommunications operator is continuing to accelerate the roll out of its fibre-based services.
The telecoms giant has confirmed today that Glasgow will become one of the UK's first cities to receive fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) broadband capable of delivering speeds of up to 40Mbps. Thousands of homes and businesses in Glasgow will be eligible for the service as soon as this Autumn, many months ahead of the original mid-2010 schedule.
In order to get Glasgow's FTTC service up and running, BT is building over 50 of its controversial new roadside cabinets and will lay approximately 30 miles of fibre optic cables. The FTTC service will connect from the cabinet to the home using existing copper wire, and BT claims initial download speeds will reach up to 40Mbps and upload speeds could hit up to 10Mbps.
However, the promise of increased speed in UK cities will bring little hope to rural residents. Earlier today, a 43-year-old resident of Loch Broom, Wester Ross, revealed that BT would charge in the region of £65,000 to have her home connected to broadband.
BT plans to deploy a fibre-optic infrastructure that will bring super-fast broadband speeds to some ten million British homes by 2012, and has recently named 98 sites that are on course to be equipped with fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) services by early summer 2010. However, with over 5,000 exchanges in the UK, BT is still only scratching the surface of next-generation broadband.
