BT: Superfast broadband will arrive a year early for many

Telecoms giant BT said it will be able to provide superfast broadband for two-thirds of the UK a year earlier than it previously predicted.

BT will bring forward £300 million of planned investment and take on an additional 520 engineers, which it hopes to recruit largely from former armed forces personnel, to achieve its target in 2014 instead of 2015.

The accelerated roll-out forms part of BT’s £2.5 billion programme to provide quicker broadband services across the UK. Six million UK premises already have access to the new super-fast technology, a figure that will rise to ten million in 2012.

The firm said its programme is the largest single commercial investment ever undertaken in the UK and one of the biggest civil engineering projects currently in operation.

Ian Livingstone, BT chief executive, said: “Our roll-out of fibre broadband is one of the fastest in the world and so it is great to be ahead of what was an already challenging schedule.”

The company is also to apply for up to £530m worth of grants from the government to take the technology into rural and hard-to-access areas.