BT ‘seeks assurance’ on doubling FTTH
August 5, 2019
BT CEO Philip Jansen has visited the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, looking for assurance on ROI if it delivers on the PM’s promise of ‘full fibre broadband sprouting’ in every premises.
The PM has declared he wants the UK’s 32 million premises to have full-fibre 1Gb access by 2025: more than double BT’s planned deployment. BT is only a recent convert to FTTH and had been at the bottom of the FTTH Council’s fibre penetration ranking. It had been standing by an FTTC then copper to the home plan, but its hand was forced to FTTH by political and industry demands mainly around the deployment of 5G.
Now BT has committed to passing four million homes with full fibre and a soft overall target of 15 million sometime in the middle 2020s. BT has stated it would take than £30 billion (€33bn) extra investment and an additional 30,000-strong workforce to hit the Prime Minister’s targets.
As with previous infrastructure upgrades Jansen is thought to be looking for assurance it will have time to recoup its investment either with exclusive supply or a margin fixed for competitor access.
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