BT adds 41 towns to fibre broadband rollout

BT has revealed the UK communities that have been added to its fibre broadband service which offers speeds of up to 40Mbit/s and will be completed by the spring of 2012.

Cabinets in 41 towns across England, Wales and Scotland will be added to the 785 cabinets already scheduled for upgrades as part of BT's £2.5bn broadband programme.

However, while this is good news for most residents and businesses in these locations, BT admitted that some could be left out owing to the geography of the towns.

Openreach chief executive Steve Robertson explained that extending BT's fibre footprint in new areas cannot be achieved without input from other parties.

"An infrastructure project on this scale, arguably as important to the future of the UK as the road or rail networks, can only be done in partnership. We are keen to talk to public and private sector organisations about how this can be achieved," he said.

"Many factors are taken into account when making decisions about where to focus our investment, and we're working on ways to give people more of an opportunity to demonstrate where demand for next-generation fibre broadband is the greatest."

The news follows an announcement at the start of the year of the six winning towns in BT's Race to Infinity competition.

BT added that its network could rise to speeds of 60Mbit/s through fibre-to-the-cabinet connections, and that upstream speeds could rise to 15Mbit/s.