BT to complete fibre broadband rollout before 2012 London Olympic Games

UK internet service provider, BT has revealed its plans to complete its fibre-optic broadband rollout before the London Olympic Games commences in 2012.

BT’s move came just after UK broadband speeds were found to be trailing in comparison to many European nations including Greece. Recent OECD global broadband speeds survey and Ofcom’s latest report have revealed that UK broadband lags behind other broadband developed nations, when it comes to delivering fast speeds to the customers.

Broadband provider BT launched fibre-optic broadband rollout last year to provide super-fast speeds of up to 40Mbps to the users by March 2013. BT has been using the fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) technology to build the new broadband network which would benefit 40 % of the households in UK. The project is estimated to cost around 1.5billion for BT.

But, now, BT has confirmed that it would speed up the rollout so that 10 million would be able to get access to fast broadband before summer 2012, according to a report. However, this is just less than half of the UK homes (40%) while many rural areas in UK would harldly receive the benefits of super-fast broadband services.

Ian Livingston, BT’s chief executive says that broadband providers could extend the reach of their fibre broadband networks if the government grants some subsidy

Financial Times reports him as saying:

“We need our politicians to decide how much of a priority fibre broadband is. BT is the only company currently planning to invest large sums in this area but we can only go so far with our shareholders’ money.”