Virgin vs BT

Fibre optic broadband

The competition is really hotting up between Virgin Media and BT over broadband speeds and the roll-out of optical fibre cables.

Sadly for BT though, it seems to be lagging behind. In March, Virgin topped the latest broadband speed tests, retaining its position as the UK's fastest broadband supplier. Virgin's next generation fibre optic broadband network generated average broadband download speeds of 8.192Mbps in March, with second placed O2 Broadband and BE Broadband recording 5.355Mbps.

Sky secured third position with speeds of 3.829Mbps, while TalkTalk and BT had average download speeds of 3.535Mbps and 3.258Mbps respectively, Broadband News & Mobile Broadband News reported.

Virgin Media's fibre optic broadband service is available to 55 percent of UK homes and offers maximum speeds of up to 50Mbps dependant on location, with no BT phone line required.

BT uptake

Whereas Virgin have already rolled out their fibre optic cables, BT have been slow on the uptake, and are still relying on ADSL, and only just planning the switch over. The majority of the BT switchover to fibre optic will start in June this year.

It was only in March 2010 that BT revealed new information about the roll-out of its GBP£1.5 billion programme to deploy superfast fibre optic broadband to as many as 10 million UK homes (40 percent) by 2012.

Scotland will become one of the first places to benefit, with more than 34,000 homes and businesses in Edinburgh and Glasgow receiving speeds of up to 40Mbps and potentially 60Mbps.

Overall BT Openreach, which is responsible for ensuring that all rival operators have equality of access to BT's local network, aims to deploy Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) based next generation broadband services this summer to 500,000 homes and businesses in the UK.

Then in March this year, BT released details of the 303 new exchanges that will receive optical fibre-based network connections from their street cabinets.

BT's infrastructure arm Openreach will enable the exchanges to receive fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) connections from street cabinets serving four million residential customers.

More than three fifths (63 percent) of the exchanges enabled are in the south east, with well over a third (37 percent) of the total announced based in London.

Although the technology will be primarily FTTC, a BT spokeswoman said: "there would be some fibre-to-the-home/premises connections enabled."

This is the biggest phase to date of BT's fibre rollout programme, with the timeline for a universal upgrade being autumn 2010 to autumn 2011, computing.co.uk reports.

BT's spokeswoman said that the connections would be available to other providers on a wholesale basis.

Openreach's aim is to give at least 40 percent of the UK the potential to receive FTTC by summer 2012.

The BT site, states, "We're launching BT Infinity in stages across the UK. You can see when we're planning to come to your area here."

BT's fibre optic broadband network will also be made available on a wholesale basis, allowing other ISPs to offer superfast broadband to their own customers.

Jodie Humphries

Jodie Humphries graduated from Bath Spa University with a BA Hons in Creative Writing in 2008. She has worked for GDS Publishing for the digital group since July 2009. She has previous experience with writing for the web, running her own website since April 2007.

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