April 7, 2011 5.02 pm This story is over 154 months old

Birchwood to get super-fast broadband

Blazing fast: BT will set live a new exchange in Birchwood to enable super-fast broadband connections.

Residents in the Birchwood area of Lincoln will get super-fast fibre broadband later this year when BT will activate a new exchange in the area.

The connections will use fibre to street cabinet technology (FTTC), which can offer up to 40Mbps download speeds and upload of 10Mbps.

BT said the speeds could rise up to 60Mbps for download and 15MBps for upload in the future.

The Birchwood exchange is expected to go live later this year, along with a new Market Deeping exchange.

Sudbrook Park, Washingborough and Stamford in Lincolnshire are also set to benefit from new, fast exchanges, later in 2012.

The five new exchanges would give access to super-fast fibre broadband to around 20,000 homes and businesses in Lincolnshire.

The majority of homes and households in an upgraded area will be able to benefit from super-fast broadband, but some will not initially be able to do so.

BT said it will continue to work to find solutions for these remaining locations.

“We want to make super-fast broadband available as widely as possible, but beyond our current commercial roll-out plans there are locations where we will need to work with the public sector to install the technology,” said Paul Bimson, BT’s partnership director for East Midlands.

“We welcome the opportunity to talk to organisations such as local authorities about ensuring their communities are able to benefit as fully as possible.”

Richard Hardesty from Lincolnshire County Council’s Onlincolnshire project welcomed the news:

“The Onlincolnshire team really welcome the news that residents and businesses of Lincolnshire are going to benefit from BT’s recent announcement.

“However we recognise that there are still many areas of the county that have little or no broadband connectivity.

“We therefore continue to encourage commercial suppliers to invest in next generation broadband infrastructure throughout Lincolnshire.

“To do this we need the support of residents and businesses to prove that the demand is there and ask that they register their interest in improved connectivity at www.onlincolnshire.org.”

Source: BT