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BT Boosts Broadband Speeds to 80Mbps in Inner City of London with 'Fibre to the Basement'

BT Boosts Broadband Speeds to 80Mbps in Inner City of London with 'Fibre to the Basement'
BT today announced trials of “fibre to the basement” technology, a new fiber broadband kit that integrates directly into the basement of a building instead of requiring access to street furniture. The technology enables BT to deliver superfast broadband to hard-to-access locations in cities across the UK. The technigue which was developed and funded by BT will be piloted in two City of London buildings from next month, providing 225 homes in the Middlesex Street Estate and around 50 SMEs based at 65 London Wall internet download speeds of up to 80Mbps. 
According to BT, by integrating fibre broadband kit into a building basement or comms room, the need for street furniture, public civil engineering works and road closures will be drastically reduced – and so will the time it takes for an installation to be carried out. 

Joe Garner, CEO, Openreach
We’re constantly exploring new ways to deliver fibre broadband to residential customers into city-centres, so we are excited to announce the launch of this trial. City-centre locations present unique challenges when it comes to upgrading consumer broadband. For example, there is less room for us to install a fibre cabinet on the pavement, and it is often harder to get permission to close roads to do the work. We also need to secure permission from multiple landlords to run new cables across their land and properties. That’s why we are being innovative with new technology solutions like this one. We optimistic that this new solution will prove that fibre broadband can be installed into building basements quickly, smoothly and economically. It could also have the added benefit of being less disruptive for our customers and the general public.

Graham Bell, Chief Information Officer of the City of London Corporation
All businesses are keener than ever to be well-connected and this ‘Fibre-to-Basement’ pilot is a welcome step forwards, especially for smaller SMEs, who are critical to London’s commercial dynamism. We hope the trials will lead to further expansion of fibre broadband across the Square Mile for residents and SMEs, complementing the Ethernet infrastructure already available to larger firms.

Image By: Andrew Dunn at Wikimedia Commons

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Ray is a news editor at The Fast Mode, bringing with him more than 10 years of experience in the wireless industry.

For tips and feedback, email Ray at ray.sharma(at)thefastmode.com, or reach him on LinkedIn @raysharma10, Facebook @1RaySharma

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