BT unveils aggressive Fiber-to-the-X timeline

Responding to its main cable rival's (Virgin Broadband) claims of having a faster broadband network, BT [1] revealed its plans to pass more than 1 million homes and businesses with a fiber-enabled broadband network by March 2010. Long the holdout in the Fiber-to-the-Premise/Home FTTP/FTTH race, BT has been talking about its ‘super-fast fibre broadband' strategy since last year and has continued to release details of its plans since then.

Under this latest plan, the operator says that 1.5 million homes and businesses will be able to get the new fiber-based services beginning in summer 2010 and an estimated 10 million customers will be able to access the services via a retail ISP by 2012. BT says that about 90 percent of the fiber-based networks will be leveraging Fiber-to-the-Curb (FTTC), while 1 million users will be able to access Fiber-to-the-Premise/Home.

With FTTC, BT claims it will be able to deliver 40 Mbps downstream/5 Mpbs upstream over a fiber connection to a remote DSLAM housed in a street cabinet. In addition to offering FTTC, BT plans to extend FTTH/Premise to older or "brownfield" or established locations where it said it will reach 40,000 homes and businesses to deliver an average of 100 Mbps downstream and 40 Mbps upstream over a fiber-based connection. To deliver direct FTTP/Home connections, BT plans to use GPON versus point-to-point Ethernet-based fiber technology.

For more:
- LightReading has this report [2]