There was good news for the UK’s internet users recently as BT announced that it is increasing its investment in super-fast broadband. The announcement means that the number of people able to benefit from faster speeds in the near future will be even greater.
The announcement was made by Ian Livingston, the chief executive of BT. He said that the company is now planning on investing a further £2.5 billion into the scheme, significantly increasing the proportion of the country that will be able to benefit from fast broadband speeds.
The new investment means that fibre broadband could be made available for up to two thirds of all the homes in the UK by 2015. BT’s previous pledge was to invest £1.5 billion with the aim of getting 40% of homes access to high-speed broadband by 2012.
The broadband speeds being proposed should be up to 40Mbps. At the moment, the maximum that most customers can get is 20Mbps. However, even faster speeds are likely across many areas of the country.
The news means that the battle between BT and Virgin Media is really set to heat up. Virgin Media is the only other main rival to BT in the super-fast broadband market, covering about 50% of the country. It will be interesting to see how Virgin reacts to the news, and whether it will improve its own service as a result.
BT also announced on top of this that it wants to improve its TV service. Livingston said that it will “offer a range of new television services ranging from a huge choice of on-demand programming, free to air HD programmes and new interactive services”. He even announced that BT could start to offer Sky Sports 1 and 2 by the time the next football season begins later this year.
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