Broadband Rollout Roundup is our weekly round-up of where new broadband connections have been rolled out, or will be rolling out, in areas across the UK. This week we take a look at BT’s recent rollouts and, in the case of Kensington and Chelsea, roll-ins, KC launching 350Mbps broadband in Hull and ToowayDirect stepping into to rescue residents of Duddon Valley in Cumbria that have been threatened with disconnection.
This is Recombu Digital’s Broadband Rollout Roundup for the week ending 1st of June, 2012.
BT unbundles fibre in two exchanges: Archer’s Court in Kent and Hemsworth in Wakefield
Just two exchanges got some fibre love from BT this week; Archer’s Court in Kent and Hemsworth in Wakefield are now primed and ready with FTTC.
If you’re living in areas served by these exchanges you should be all good to order BT Infinity 2, giving you speeds of up to 76Mbps.
Come the 11th of June, you should also be ready to shell out for an upgrade to FTTP with BT’s 330Mbps upgrade program. More on that as and when we hear it…
KC launches 350Mbps KC Lightstream 350 next-gen Fibre-to-the-Premises
KC today announced the launch of KC Lightstream 350. This brand spanking new service provides a guaranteed download speed of 350Mbps, comes with a download cap of 750GB and is billed as the UK’s fastest full fibre service currently going.
Costing £99 a month plus £13 a month for line rental, KC Lightstream 350 is available to just 7,500 residents in Hull right now and will be rolled out to a total of 15,000 homes throughout 2012.
ToowayDirect volunteers to rescue Duddon Valley, Cumbria from broadband blackout
Duddon Valley in Cumbria is facing being cut off from the internet as money from government initatives dries up.
ToowayDirect however is offering to help the village get set up with its satellite broadband service, which will work with Sky or Freesat dishes and provide top speeds of 10Mbps down and 4Mbps up.
The basic system can be easily self-installed and looks set to replace the Cable & Wireless-owned network which served just 42 people.
BT pulls out of Kensington and Chelsea FTTC upgrade, Hyperoptic steps in to offer its services
Negotiations broke down between BT and the Royal Borough Kensington and Chelsea over the installation of Fibre-to-the-Cabinet.
BT’s proposal to set up street cabinets met with consternation with councillors who wanted to preserve the historic identity of the Borough’s streets.
A spokesperson for Kensington and Chelsea told us that: “BT was seeking permission for 108 cabinets, many of them in sensitive locations. It would not compromise on the number, or on the design. It would not use sites that already had unused BT equipment and it would not consider putting the equipment underground or any other method.”
BT promptly pulled out of its upgrade programme for the area, which had seen cabinets installed in 11 locations across Bayswater, Kensal Green and Earls Court.
This provided the opportunity for fibre providers Hyperoptic to step in and publicly offer to pipe FTTP lines to homes in the area, bypassing the need for street cabinets. Though Hyperoptic isn’t strictly speaking, taking the job off of BT’s hands, it’s a good PR win for the ISP, who is appealing directly to residents.
Hyperoptic’s top tier service costs £50 a month and provides download speeds of up to 1Gbps, a speed which BT won’t be offering on its own network for some time.
Separately, BT mentioned that with engineers freed up from commitments to Kensington and Chelsea, we should expect to see faster rollout of fibre in other parts of London. Stay tuned for updates on this in a future edition of Broadband Rollout Roundup.
Leave a Reply