BT pledges extra £50m to commercial broadband roll-out

BT today announced it was investing another £50m in its commercial roll-out of fibre broadband across the UK.

The telecoms giant has already invested £2.5bn since 2010 on its commercial projects with the goal of bringing 19 million premises on to its fibre network by the end of Spring 2014.

This extra funding will give a further 400,000 homes and businesses access across 30 cities in the UK over the next three years.

The main areas BT has allotted the money for are to revisit city cabinets that were left out of its initial investment due to technical challenges or local planning restrictions, to install cabinets specifically for multi-tennant buildings, such as apartment blocks, and to run additional fibre to new builds.

“Our fibre programme is going extremely well with our engineers connecting homes and businesses across the UK,” said Mike Galvin, managing director of network investment at BT Openreach – the division responsible for broadband. “Some city areas have proved challenging in the past but we are returning to those and will pass hundreds of thousands of additional premises with fibre.”

Once installed, the network will be offered to other ISPs on a wholesale basis, so the likes of TalkTalk, Sky and PlusNet can offer their services over BT’s fibre.

“We are reaching vast swathes of rural Britain with our public sector partners but we will upgrade these city areas under our own steam,” added Galvin. “Businesses in cities already have access to ultra-fast speeds but fibre will give them greater choice.”