Glasgow to get fibre sooner after London complaints
Published: 17 Aug 2009 16:52 BST
An area of Glasgow is to get fibre-based next-generation broadband sooner than planned, after a London pilot of the technology met with objections from some local residents.
Fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) technology is currently being trialled in the north London suburb of Muswell Hill, as well as in the Cardiff suburb of Whitchurch. However, part of the Muswell Hill deployment has been suspended after residents claimed the fibre cabinets were too large and unsightly for their conservation-area neighbourhood.
As a result, BT announced on Monday that over 15,500 homes and businesses in the Hillington, Cardonald and Crookston areas of Glasgow would be brought into the pilot scheme by the autumn — rather than next year — so as to maintain the footprint of premises that are involved in the trial.
"Glasgow is being brought forward as a result of some of the issues that we're experiencing in Muswell Hill," a BT spokesperson told ZDNet UK on Monday, adding that it was the Halfway exchange in Glasgow that was being fibre-enabled.
Fibre-to-the-cabinet technology is one way of deploying high-speed connectivity to premises. A faster option is fibre-to-the-home (FTTH), which involves fibre being run directly to buildings, but FTTC is cheaper as it only requires fibre running to the street cabinet, with existing copper connections being used to carry connectivity to the users.
According to BT, those involved in the FTTC pilot will initially get download speeds of up to 40Mbps and upload speeds of between five and 10Mbps.
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