BT Openreach (NYSE: BT) is ramping up its already aggressive Fiber to the X (FTTX) deployment schedule with plans to invest another $1.5 billion on the network.
Part of broader plan to bring fiber-based services to an estimated two-thirds of UK households by 2015, BT Openreach has once again turned to core vendor Huawei for the latest deployment. In May, BT announced that it would spend an additional $1.46 billion on its FTTX network build so it could have a majority of UK homes connected to coincide with the 2012 Olympics.
Interestingly, BT's enhanced investment plans comes as the UK government revealed last month that it would take until 2015 to achieve its universal 2 Mbps broadband goal. Originally, the government hoped that it could reach the 2 Mbps goal by 2012.
Huawei is no stranger to BT as the Chinese vendor began working with BT in 2008, a relationship that culminated in BT launching its Fiber to the Cabinet (FTTC)-based services this year. Similar to that ongoing network build, Huawei will again provide BT with various access network products and related services.
"BT and Huawei have had a strong relationship for several years; we are pleased to extend this further by choosing Huawei as one of our strategic partners to help us deploy next-generation access on a national scale as part of BT's £2.5bn investment in fibre technology," said Steve Robertson, CEO of BT's Openreach division in a release.
For more:
- Electronics Weekly has this article
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