Why is BT laying fibre on Virgin's cable territory?

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 23 Mar 2009 at 16:16

Virgin Media claims every one of the 29 sites selected for BT's initial fibre rollout is already covered by its high-speed cable network - meaning BT's initial rollout may do nothing to improve Britain's overall broadband speeds.

BT revealed the list of exchanges that will get the 40Mbits/sec fibre technology this morning. Twenty seven of the 29 sites are urban areas, with BT dabbling with two rollouts in rural areas to "learn lessons from deploying fibre in such environments".

However, Virgin claims that all 29 of the sites are already covered by its cable network, which offers speeds of up to 50Mbits/sec.

"We already have 50 meg in four areas - Belfast, Watford, Halifax and Oldham," a Virgin spokesperson told PC Pro. "All the other areas are in our cable area," which are due to be upgraded to the 50Mbits/sec network over the coming year.

The Virgin spokesperson said she couldn't be exactly sure without a full list of postcodes for each of the BT exchanges.

While BT's fibre will provide some much needed competition for Virgin, the overlap means Britain as a whole may not see any speed increase as a result of the initial BT rollout, which will cover 500,000 premises by 2010.

"We have worked very closely with communications providers' customers, and local and devolved governments in the selection of these sites," a spokesperson for BT told PC Pro. "You would expect the highest level of interest to come from urban areas."

"Remember, this is the only first set of locations," the spokesperson added. "There will be more to come."

BT plans to announce more fibre sites in the autumn.