Next phase of BT's superfast broadband rollout starts on Monday

Openreach underpins BT's FTTC rollouts

More than 15,000 homes in Muswell Hill in North London, and Whitchurch, a suburb north of Cardiff, will start to receive next-generation high-speed broadband when BT kicks off the next phase of its fibre-optic rollout on Monday.

The operational pilot is a key component of the government's Digital Britain strategy, and will also see BT next week announce a further tranche of exchanges to move to fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) optical access.

"Both pilots will involve over 15,000 premises with over 100 street cabinets being FTTC-enabled," said BT strategy and portfolio group director Liv Garfield.

She added that BT had already announced the next 29 exchanges to be enabled, which will go live between now and January 2010, connecting more than half a million premises.

Garfield said that next week BT will announce more exchanges to be enabled, bringing more than a million premises live by March 2010, and 1.5 million by summer 2010.

"By 2012 we'll have spent £1.5bn to bring fibre to 10 million homes," said Garfield.

Openreach managing director for next-generation access David Campbell said new street cabinets would be needed, but relatively little "digging up the road ". He said ISP customers involved in the FTTC trials starting on Monday would include Carphone Warehouse, Sky and O2.

Campbell also said that BT will be looking to run two exchanges using fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) totaling around 40,000 customers next March.

"We're also about to embark on a consultation around the voice services we can run over this as well, coming out in the next few weeks," he said.

Pricing for the trial will not be announced until the end of July, with Garfield saying that although there would be offers, "longer term, it will depend on market take up, usage levels and what backhaul consumption we see."

Garfield said the major advantages for business would be related to flexible working.

"[Things like] the networked office, but certainly towards a more collaborative way of working, because what we're seeing in recessionary times across our current portfolio is lots of conferencing and agile working – and fibre plays well [to those applications]," she said.