It also highlighted the announcement as a big opportunity for resellers in the region and called on BT to step up its plans to take broadband to the rest of rural Britain.
John Carter, Managing Director of DMSL, says: “This will give Cornish businesses and resellers covering the area the same opportunities that urban areas of the country have enjoyed for years. It will help to invigorate the local economy and put Cornish businesses and consumers ahead of most regions in the UK. For broadband resellers and BT partners it opens up even more potential to sell, not only BT broadband services, but also cloud computing, hosted voice services and unified communications. We’d now like to see BT extending its plans to roll-out fibre to other rural areas of the UK, as that would create even more growth potential.”
BT recently announced that the number of broadband connections in the UK had reached 15 million. This landmark has been achieved even though some areas of the UK, such as rural areas of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the most remote areas of England, do not have access to full-speed broadband services. BT has already achieved over 60 percent coverage of the UK with its 21st Century Network roll-put, which will enable download speeds of up to 20Mbps, subject to line quality, but that’s not going to reach rural areas like Cornwall for some time yet. Fibre service though, could shift the balance to rural communities, says Carter. “If BT can find a way to deliver fibre to these areas though, they will be able to access services that delivery 40Mbps or more and that will open up a whole range of opportunities – both for end-users and for resellers.”
BT has already set out plans to provide FTTC to around two thirds of UK businesses and homes by mid-2015, but it has always been assumed that major towns and cities and other heavily populated areas would get the high-speed infrastructure first. The £132 million Cornwall project is being funded jointly by the EU and BT, but if it is successful, it could encourage BT to make further investments in rural areas. The Cornish roll-out is scheduled to be completed by 2014.