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Super-fast broadband race is won

BT’s “Race to Infinity” competition, for communities to vote for their area to be one of the next upgraded to super-fast broadband, has proved so popular that BT has increased the number of winners from five to six.

Race to Infinity set out to find five communities where demand for super-fast broadband was highest, but because six areas all achieved extremely high levels of votes, BT has said all six will be among the first to enjoy new BT Infinity fibre optic broadband.

The winners were 1) Baschurch, Shropshire; 2) Blewbury, Oxfordshire; 3) Caxton, Cambridgeshire; 4) Innerleithen, Scottish Borders; 5) Madingley, Cambridgeshire; and 6) Whitchurch, Hampshire.

More than 360,000 votes were cast right across the UK in the three month long Race to Infinity survey that finished on December 31, 2010. The next step is for Openreach to complete a survey of the winning areas to assess and plan fibre deployment.

BT has promised to engage with any community not winning the competition, where at least 75 per cent of homes and businesses have voted for their exchange. This is to see if those exchanges can either be included in future commercial phases of fibre broadband – if the exchange is commercially viable - or enabled because of either public sector or community support as has already happened in some parts of the UK. The six successful exchange areas will be added to BT's deployment and enabled by early 2012 at the latest.

Openreach reveals draft proposals for duct and pole sharing

Openreach has announced the draft pricing and design proposals for its new duct and pole sharing products, aimed at offering communications providers an additional route to market for the delivery of super-fast fibre broadband services in the UK.

Openreach, BT’s local access network division, already provides a range of different options for communications providers to access its fibre network on a wholesale basis. The pricing, design and terms and conditions of the Openreach duct and pole sharing products are draft proposals at this stage and follow extensive industry engagement.

By putting all of this in place, Openreach has underlined its commitment to working with industry to find innovative solutions for delivering fibre broadband across the UK and finding new ways of extending the nationwide footprint for super-fast broadband. The proposed pricing of the duct sharing product compares very favourably with similar solutions offered in other European markets.

Steve Robertson, CEO of Openreach, said: “We’re doing what we promised by offering the communications industry yet another way of accessing our network in order to deliver super-fast broadband speeds to homes and businesses. We’ve listened to the views and requirements of our customers and will continue to work closely with industry and Ofcom to finalise the details of our duct and pole sharing products.

“Although we don’t view duct and pole sharing as the silver bullet to get fibre to every premises in the UK, these new products represent a positive step, opening our infrastructure to supply industry with an even wider range of different mechanisms for delivering fibre broadband. We also think it’s really important that consumers and businesses continue to enjoy a choice of fibre services so we will be expecting others to be as open as we are.”

The commercial launch of the service is expected in summer 2011.

BT’s Partners with Netmums for Get IT Together campaign

BT has partnered with Netmums to further promote BT’s Get IT Together compaign on the Netmums website. Get IT Together is a new campaign from BT, launched in October 2010, calling for the internet-savvy to become ‘surfer supporters’ and coach their friends and family how to get online. BT, which has continuously worked since 2002 to tackle the digital divide, has provided a new suite of resources at www.bt.com/getittogether to help people make their friend’s first steps online as simple as possible.

Since its launch as part of Get Online Week in October, the Get IT Together campaign has had over 30,000 visitors to the website. There are still over 9 million people in the UK who have never used the internet, and so BT is calling for help from all Netmums members with friends or family who haven’t yet got to grips with the internet.

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