BT’s vision is for fibre-based services to be available to 90% of UK premises over the next five or six years at download speeds of 100Mbps or above. Livingston assured ministers that the company’s fibre investment would include rural areas, with the number of homes unable to achieve speed of 2Mbps set to drop from 12% to less than 2%. He also claimed that the UK is set to develop a position as one of Europe’s leading broadband nations.
Livingston shared his belief with the cabinet that fibre broadband services could encourage economic growth in the UK. “Super-fast broadband can be a catalyst for economic growth. We have recently recruited a further 800 engineers to help deploy it but it is what it can do for business that is so impressive. The Government has been a great supporter in recognising that this type of infrastructure investment can drive the UK’s long-term growth.”
The company also updated the cabinet on BT’s trialing of TV white space and LTE technologies.
BT announced the launch of its FTTH service in November, customers in several areas of London are the first to have access to the service.
Pyramid Research has predicted that global deployment of FTTH networks is to nearly triple by 2016. Line numbers are expected to rise from 68 million in 2011 to 198 million in 2016 driven by western European deployments and uptake in China, Russia and the US. The global FTTH broadband market is expected by Pyramid to generate nearly $116 billion in service revenues by 2016.
