More than 67,000 homes and businesses in the Bristol area have been targeted for super-fast broadband as part of a major expansion of BT’s £2.5bn fibre broadband roll-out plans. Bedminster, Bishopsworth, Eastville and Henbury, along with Kingswood in South Gloucestershire, are among the areas identified and will take the South West's new super-fast network to more than one million users.
They will join Bristol North, Bristol West and Downend exchanges which are already live and Bitton, Bristol Redcliffe, Bristol South, Easton, Stoke Bishop, Filton and Winterbourne which are due to be upgraded. The latest upgrades are due to be completed during 2012.
Weston-super-Mare is also set to benefit from the roll-out along with other centres in the South West including Barnwood, Cirencester, Devonport; Dorchester, Exmouth, Fernwood, Gloucester, Newton Abbot; Poole; Teignmouth, Tewkesbury and Yeovil.
BT’s local network business Openreach is driving forward plans to make super-fast fibre broadband available to two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2014*. The network features a mix of fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) and fibre to the premises (FTTP) technologies. Speeds are vastly superior to those previously available to many UK homes and businesses.
FTTC, delivered to street cabinets, currently offers download speeds of up to 40Mbps with 10Mbps upstream. Openreach has said it will roughly double these speeds next year. FTTP, where the fibre goes directly to homes and businesses, offers speeds of up to 100Mbps, rising to 300Mbps in the spring. This compares with 6.8Mbps, the average actual speed of all UK broadband according to Ofcom’s latest research published in July 2011.
Jon Reynolds, BT’s South West regional director, said: “At a stroke, small and medium sized firms will have access to big business speeds at much lower costs allowing them to find new markets, boost their competitiveness and create new jobs.Faster upstream speeds are a boon for flexible and remote working, slashing office overheads and improving employees’ work-life balance. Large graphic and video files can be sent immediately online instead of being physically delivered to customers on hard disk. And high quality voice and video calls will enable businesses to save time travelling to clients without losing direct customer contact.
“We are making rapid progress with super-fast broadband across the UK. More than six million homes and businesses can now access the high-speed technology and last month we announced that two-thirds of UK premises will have access by the end of 2014, a year earlier than planned."
Barbara Janke, Bristol City Council leader, added: " Bristol is well-known as a digital leader amongst cities. We are keen to work with partner providers such as BT to make sure the infrastructure is there for our companies to thrive and grow, and all our residents have the opportunities to benefit from using the internet."
Internet users with a fibre broadband connection can do much more online, all at the same time. A family can download a movie, watch a TV replay service, surf the net and play games online simultaneously. The latest chart hit can be downloaded in around two seconds, a CD in 30 seconds and a feature length HD film in 10 minutes. Upload speeds are the fastest in the UK with large video and data files being sent almost instantly and posting hi-resolution photos on Facebook, takes seconds.
