BT (NYSE: BT) is confident that it will be able complete the rollout of its Fiber to the Cabinet (FTTC) to about two-thirds of the UK's premises by 2014, a year ahead of its original build out schedule.
To meet this accelerated goal, BT will spend about $483 million of the GBP2.5 billion (USD4.03 billion) total it has allocated for the last mile fiber project. Part of this figure of the accelerated program includes funding to hire an additional 520 engineers.
"Our rollout of fiber broadband is one of the fastest in the world and so it is great to be ahead of what was an already challenging schedule," Ian Livingston, BT's CEO, said in the statement. "We are investing when others are merely talking about it."
As of today, BT has connected about 6 million premises to its FTTC network, a figure it says will increase to 10 million by the end of next year. In September, BT Openreach revealed it would bring its FTTC service to 114 exchanges by the fall of 2012.
Obviously, the enhanced timeline and enhanced FTTC speeds like its recent 80/20 Mbps service are a clear response to cable competitors like Virgin Media (Nasdaq: VMED), which currently offers a 100 Mbps service over its existing HFC-based last mile network.
For more:
- see the release
- Bloomberg has this article
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