BT to offer 100MBPS fiber access to 10,000 Kent (UK) residents

Congrats to our brothers and sisters across the pond! 10,000 families in Kent will soon have access to fiber connectivity from a major provider that is only available to a tiny minority of Verizon customers in the US. Look for dramatic economic growth in this neighborhood as small and micro businesses flourish.

BT is boosting Britain’s attempt to remain at the top of the global broadband market with plans to install a network at Ebbsfleet in Kent that offers speeds 20 times faster than the average UK household connection. The company hopes its deployment of the UK’s fastest ever residential network, at the development of 10,000 new homes, will be a crucial testbed as the government, regulator Ofcom and industry come to decide how to upgrade the country’s broadband network.

From August, BT’s Openreach unit will start installing super fast fibre connections rather than traditional copper phone lines at the Ebbsfleet site, owned by Land Securities. It will offer the lines to BT Retail and rival ISPs and media companies such as Carphone Warehouse’s TalkTalk and BSkyB, on a wholesale basis, enabling these companies to provide a host of bandwidth-hungry services such as high definition TV and film downloads. (from the Guardian)