LONDON -- Openreach today announced it will make fibre broadband available to a further 98 exchange areas as part of BT’s £2.5bn roll-out of the technology. The exchanges, which are scheduled to be enabled by late 2013 are scattered across the UK from Sandown on the Isle of Wight to Oban in the Highlands and Islands.

The deployment will add nearly 800,000 homes and businesses to Openreach’s previously announced fibre plans. In total, the company aims to serve around two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2014. Openreach is making fibre broadband available on an open wholesale basis using a mix of fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) and fibre to the premises (FTTP) technologies. Both offer speeds many times faster than those currently available to most UK homes and businesses.

FTTC, where fibre is delivered to the street cabinet, offers download speeds of up to 80Mbps and upload speeds of up to 20Mbps. FTTP, where fibre runs all the way to homes and businesses, currently offers download speeds of 110Mbps, with 330mbps being offered shortly.

Openreach