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U.K. incumbent says average broadband speed increased to 29 Mbps last year.
BT on Monday revealed that its fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) network is now available to 25 million U.K. premises.
The incumbent telco said its infrastructure arm Openreach has been passing premises at a rate of 70,000 per week on average since the deployment started in 2009. Between 2009 and 2015 the average connection speed increased from 4.1 Mbps to 29 Mbps, BT said.
Approximately 4 million of the 25 million premises were passed thanks to funding from the government’s controversial Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme, under which BT has won the vast majority of network tenders.
"Our approach has delivered affordable superfast services to the vast majority of the country in the fastest possible time," said Openreach CEO Clive Selley, in a statement.
"We want to build upon that by making ultrafast broadband available to most of the U.K. We will do this using a mix of G.fast technology and fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP), with the latter focused mainly on new developments and small businesses in high streets and business parks," he said.
Indeed, BT in March announced plans to conduct G.fast trials in Cambridgeshire and Kent, as part of its plan to provide 500-Mbps broadband to 10 million premises by 2020.
Openreach has been the subject of intense scrutiny lately, due to telco regulator Ofcom’s strategic review of the U.K. market. The watchdog in February ordered governance changes to make Openreach more independent from BT, and instructed it to open up its physical fibre network to competitors. It has also reserved the right to force a full separation of BT and Openreach.
Furthermore, Ofcom has also called on Openreach to speed up the installation of leased lines to businesses, after an investigation revealed it fails to complete one in four installations on schedule.
