Another week another, relatively quiet Rollout Roundup, due to BT being preoccupied with other matters.
Earlier in the year it’s been the terrible weather and BT’s subsequent work on getting customers reconnected that’s put the brakes on rollout. This week it’s been the highly publicised announcement of BT Sport that’s commanded the most attention.
Despite this there’s been activity down in the South West. Superfast Cornwall has connected more homes and businesses in Cornwall and the ambitious project to get the Scilly Isles supercharged is now underway.
East of the border, there’s word of BT fibre-based broadband services reaching more places in Devon.
Here’s Broadband Rollout Roundup for the week ending 11/05/2013.
Sharp’s Brewery gets connected to 40Mbps speeds
Cornwall has given the world Aphex Twin, pasties and plenty of tin and it’s also given us some pretty decent ale too. The Sharp’s Brewery, where the tasty Doom Bar is made, has been connected to BT’s superfast fibre-based network as part of the Superfast Cornwall project.
Based in Rock, Cornwall, the Brewery is one of 1,100 properties in the surrounding area that has benefitted from superfast connections. The Trebetherick exchange also serves Pityme and St. Minver and 2,000 premises will be connected once rollout is complete.
The new FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) connection at the Brewery is now regularly kicking out download speeds of 40Mbps, where before even considering something as lofty as cloud computing would have been impossible.
Sarah Allcock, Head of Finance at Sharp’s said: “Before superfast, we consistently encountered issues with our connection, the servers kept going down and the internet was always running very slowly. This has all changed with superfast coming into place and our new fibre connection is regularly providing 40Mbps, a colossal difference which now gives us the benefit of a more reliable and consistent service, regardless of the number of people using the internet at the same time.”
As well as this, Superfast Cornwall has announced that the first few properties connected to the Week St Mary exchange can now order in superfast broadband.
FTTC for 19,000 across Barnstaple and Bideford
As well as more connections in Cornwall, BT this week announced that more homes and businesses in Barnstaple and Bideford, in north Devon can access superfast FTTC broadband.
Over 12,000 premises in Barnstaple can access the faster speeds while 7,000 Bideford residents and firms can connect at speeds of up to 80Mbps.
BT says that in total more than 26,000 premises over the coming weeks will benefit, but it hasn’t detailed how the connections will be allocated between the two towns.
Over 300,000 properties in Devon will benefit from superfast broadband by Spring 2014, when BT plans to have its £2.5 billion commercial rollout completed.
Note that the BT commercial rollout is independent of the £94 million Connecting Devon and Somerset project, which aims to get 90 per cent of premises connected to superfast speeds by the end of 2016.
Check your postcode before trying to get connected
If you hear about superfast broadband landing in your area and you want to sign up for it, make sure you do a postcode check first.
Just because BT has enabled your local exchange for fibre-based broadband, it doesn’t mean that you’re able to get it. UK broadband resource SamKnows features a postcode checker whereby you can see if superfast is available in your area or not.
Also, note that the speed you’re likely to get from an FTTC connection will greatly depend on your proximity to a fibre-connected street cabinet. Check out our guide ‘What is FTTC aka Fibre to the Cabinet and what does it mean?’ for more details.
That’s all for this week’s very short and to the point Rollout Roundup.
Leave a Reply