A couple of days ago Openreach announced details of the latest phase of their superfast fibre broadband roll-out. If you’re one of the unlucky ones in an area where fibre broadband isn’t currently available then this might be just the news you’ve been waiting for. Carry on reading to find out if and when Plusnet Unlimited Fibre is coming your way... An additional 9 telephone exchanges into their national £2.5bn roll-out of up to 80Mbps (Megabits per second) capable Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) based superfast broadband ISP products around the United Kingdom. At present BT’s commercial roll-out (excluding BDUK) aims to cover around 66% of the UK (19 million homes and business) by spring 2014 and the last (final) major deployment update was published in February 2013. Since then the service has expanded to pass over 15 million premises (roughly half of the country) and it continues to grow. But as a result of today’s announcement around 58,000 extra homes and businesses across these extra areas will have access to the technology between this Summer (2013) and the end of Spring 2014. In addition, infill work (i.e. expanding fibre into areas that were previously thought to be not commercially viable) should help to reach another 78,000 premises served by previously announced exchanges. The latest 9 Telephone Exchange Upgrades are: GREAT WAKERING – Essex HOLLAND ON SEA – Essex HORTON BANK – West Yorkshire HOYLAND – South Yorkshire INGATESTONE – Essex JARROW – Tyne and Wear KENTON – Tyne and Wear LOWER SHELTON – Bedfordshire WEST MERSEA – Essex If you’re wondering what telephone exchange you’re connected to then you can find out using our very own Exchange Checker over on the Usertools website. We should probably mention that even if your exchange is listed, there are still a handful of reasons why you might not be able to receive the service when things go live. This is because the technology is dependent on your local green cabinet as well as the equipment in the exchange itself. Just don’t get too excited until you see some dates cropping up over on BT Wholesale’s Broadband Availability Checker.
Here are some of the more common scenarios that cause disappointment for customers on enabled exchanged looking to move to Plusnet Fibre.
1. The line is connected directly to a telephone exchange, rather than via a green cabinet.
2. The line is too far from your nearest green cabinet to support a stable fibre optic broadband service.
3. The work hasn’t yet been done to enable your nearest green cabinet.
4. The green cabinet isn’t suitable for fibre optic cabling. If you want see if fibre is currently available in your area then head over to our website and find out using our availability checker.
Find out more about how fibre broadband works in our handy guide what is fibre broadband
Is your telephone exchange featured? Are you counting down the days until fibre becomes available? Or are you one of the unlucky ones who always seem to miss out? Let us know by leaving a comment below …