We reported at the start of this week about BT extending the roll out of it’s fibre optic network to two-thirds of the UK up from the 40% it originally planned and this has been confirmed yesterday by BT as they had a press conference releasing their annual figures.
The increased roll out has come with an extra £1 billion of funding being pumped into the fibre network, originally BT were going to spend £1.5 bn but yesterday said that this is now going to be £2.5 bn and should have the 66% coverage by 2015.
Last year (to the end of March 2010) BT made a £1bn profit, with is a huge increase on the previous year where they actually made a £244 million loss.
BT’s fibre network is mainly going to be FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) that will offer broadband speeds up to 40Mb, BT themselves will be offering customers fibre broadband on it’s service they have named BT Infinity or they will be other broadband providers who will use BT’s fibre network to offer their own fibre broadband services.
This news will no doubt be a blow to BT’s main rivals Virgin Media, who currently have 55% coverage of the UK with their own fibre broadband network where they offer a headline speed of 50Mb broadband. The increased rivalry between the two companies should hopefully be good news for consumers though as each company fights to win over customers, hopefully meaning cheaper fibre broadband for us.
Virgin Media have been the UK’s fibre optic cable broadband supplier and have been the only ones able to push this service, that is until this week when BT officially launched 
Virgin Media have hit back saying that BT’s claims are not strictly true as they are comparing services which are not the same.
BT Infinity will be available to order from the 25th January for those areas that have it enabled. BT is installing FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) for most of it’s fibre network with a few places getting FTTH (Fibre To The Home) which is even faster.