This announcement came with the news that another 30,000 homes and businesses in Worcestershire are set to benefit from super-fast broadband. Upgrades are due to be completed by Autumn 2012. This will take the planned roll-out of super-fast fibre broadband to more than 157,000 homes and businesses in the county.
Upon hearing the news Mark said, “As we start the second decade of the 21st century, services such as super fast broadband become a necessity. That is why I am delighted that Kidderminster will see this unrolled in the town soon. I have had a number of letters and contacts from residents of Kidderminster highlighting the problem of slow internet access and I am delighted that BT has responded to these concerns in such a quick and productive way. This announcement will help raise Kidderminster as a good place to both live and work.”
BT’s local network business Openreach expects to make super-fast fibre broadband available to two-thirds of UK homes and businesses by the end of 2015. It is building the new network using a mix of fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) and fibre to the premises (FTTP) technologies. Both provide much faster speeds than those previously available to many UK homes and businesses.
FTTC, delivered to street cabinets, currently offers download speeds of up to 40Mbps and upstream speeds up to 10Mbps. Openreach is planning to roughly double these speeds next year. FTTP, where the fibre goes directly to homes and businesses, will offer speeds of up to 100Mbps.