BT adds 178 exchanges to superfast fibre upgrade plans

BT Openreach has added 178 exchanges to its fibre upgrade plans, claiming to offer access to superfast services to another two million homes and businesses.

The company aims to have most of the new exchanges online by 2012, which would mean that around 80 per cent of BT's network will offer the superfast services for other companies, including BT Retail, to sell to end customers.

Upgrade locations include Leicester, Newport and Wigan as well as several areas of Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow. A full list of BT Exchange upgrades can be seen here, which excludes 17 locations in Cornwall being upgraded as part of a separate BT project.

V3 asked BT for the locations of the Cornish exchanges but had received no information at the time of publication.

BT Openreach chief executive Olivia Garfield said the rollouts show that BT is on course to meet its revised 2014 target and that the company will look to use government money to increase the scope of the network.

"We will make fibre available to two thirds of UK premises by the end of 2014 and we want to go even further. It is important that as many premises as possible have access to fibre and so we will bid for the Broadband Delivery funds," she said.

BT Openreach announced earlier this year that it will increase the capabilities of fibre products to offer services of 40Mbit/s, and that a few select locations will see speeds of a whopping 300Mbit/s.