BT will boost the number of FTTH connections planned for its new fiber network by 150%, after finding the rollout cost will be lower than expected.
Steve Robertson, head of the BT's wholesale arm Openreach, told the Financial Times it would install FTTH for 2.5 million of the 10 million homes to be connected via the new network. This is roughly 10% of the UK's households.
The original plan was to install FTTH connections for just 1 million homes, and FTTC for the remaining 9 million to be connected.
BT plans to lay fiber to many of the homes through existing ducts that contain copper phone wires, significantly reducing the cost of deployment, Robertson said. An alternative is to suspend fiber cables onto telephone poles.
The company believes that these cost-cutting efforts will allow it to conduct the new rollout schedule within its £1.5 billion (€1.63 billion) budget.
BT intends to deliver speeds of up to 100 Mbps via the FTTH connections - rising to up to 1 Gbps in the future – and 40Mbps via the remaining FTTC links.
Openreach last week announced it would commence FTTP trials in areas already using traditional copper technology by January 2010.