Telecoms giant BT is going to inject a further £1 billion into the development of a nationwide superfast broadband network.

The new money will go towards providing two thirds of the UK with superfast broadband access by the end of 2015.

In the past BT has said that it hopes to be able to get fibre optic broadband rolled out for 40 per cent of the UK in time for 2012 and the Olympic Games in London. Its minimum download speed target for these connections was set at 40Mbps, which is currently the maximum which its tiny number of fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) customers can achieve.

Before 2010 ends BT will bring the first four million customers the opportunity to access its next generation high speed broadband network and with the additional funds it will be able to extend the reach of its fibre optic cabling to even more households.

BT recently announced that its financial performance was finally on the up, with profits of £1 billion recently posted. This was after serious losses in the previous year, which resulted in job losses, cost cutting and general streamlining of its entire business.

The luckiest BT broadband customers will have full fibre coverage delivered right into their homes, with download speeds of 100Mbps possible. The majority will be FTTC customers, but this is still a technology which vastly outpaces current ADSL connections.

Simple Broadband’s Communications Manager Simon Gerrard said “The current range of BT broadband deals are about to get a lot more interesting as it commits to this large investment into next-generation technology. Experts agree that fibre optic broadband is the only service which can continue to further the possibility of online entertainment and information and so BT’s funding of this will be welcomed.”

BT says that it is planning to roll out high speed broadband across a wider area of the UK by enabling more local telephone exchanges for its wholesale broadband service.

An official announcement details a total of nearly 150 different locations around the nation that are going to benefit as a result of these plans and local customers will be able to get online at maximum speeds of 24Mbps once the work has been completed.

BT aims to ensure that nearly 17 million UK customers are online using this faster connection technology by mid-2011, with home broadband and business broadband packages both benefiting from the roll out.

BT’s wholesale manager Emma Elshof confirmed that the provider would be performing the upgrade work over the next few months. She said that even more changes were on the way and that over the summer BT was planning to make some significant announcements.

BT has set a deadline of early 2011 as the period by which the wholesale broadband connections will be available at most of the planned sites, offering an estimated 75 per cent of the population the option to access the internet at 24Mbps.

Although the news about the BT wholesale product reaching more customers is good, most people will be more concerned about the availability of its fibre-to-the-cabinet service. BT Infinity is making its way into more communities, but the progress will seem sluggish for anyone in a community where no upgrade is planned.

Simple Broadband’s Communications Manager Simon Gerrard said “It is encouraging to see BT working on bringing faster ADSL broadband to more of the UK and cheap cable broadband is still progressing steadily in its availability. We can only hope that competition and investment will drive home broadband forward.”

Business and home broadband customers will be pleased to learn that BT has announced various locations that will be benefiting from a fibre optic broadband upgrade in the next few months.

Its BT Infinity service, which uses fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) technology has so far been available in limited areas of the UK, but now BT says that an additional four million business and home users will be able to enjoy download speeds of up to 40Mbps.

A BT spokesperson said that the telecoms giant is committed to bringing 40 per cent of the UK population some form of fibre optic broadband by 2012 and now it has announced that customers in London, the Midlands, Yorkshire and East Anglia will be some of the first to experience the speed boost.

BT will not be the only broadband provider offering fibre optic services as part of the new upgrades, as it will also be selling on its service to ISPs in order to generate competition and variety. This will be welcomed by business broadband customers who may not be convinced by the current BT Infinity tariffs.

More than 300 local telephone exchanges are being upgraded as part of the new initiative and around 190 of these will be located in the south and east of the UK. The North West will see 30 exchanges upgraded and the Midlands is getting around 40 fibre-ready exchanges.

BT hopes to complete the work by the middle of next year, although some have said that the concentration of the exchanges in the south implies that the digital divide is getting wider.

Simple Broadband’s Communications Manager Simon Gerrard said “Businesses can really benefit from high speed access, not only for their own premises, but also within the local community, as the internet will become an ever more effective tool for sourcing custom locally.”

The budget delivered by Alistair Darling last week was extremely important for businesses looking to ensure their future prosperity as the promise of universal high speed broadband was essentially pledged.

The new 50p Broadband Tax has been confirmed and this comes almost simultaneously with the new Building Britain’s Digital Future initiative, in which prime minister Gordon Brown committed to getting high speed broadband to 100 per cent of the population in the next decade. Business leaders can only hope that future governments are able to live up to this promise.

Thankfully it looks as though most businesses are being backed by local and national plans to help bring broadband to as many people as possible, but for many there is little clear idea as to what kind of timescale they will be looking at before the promise of universal high speed broadband becomes a reality.

At the moment, the 2017 deadline for 90 per cent high speed broadband coverage is looking attainable, but there are no official figures relating to how much the public or private purse will have to pay in order to ensure that the final 10 per cent is not left floating in the wind.

The nations that currently top the charts in terms of high speed broadband availability, including Korea and Japan, could only achieve market saturation with heavy investment from the authorities, which suggests that relying entirely on the private sector for the cash is not going to work in Britain.

It is believed that if high speed BT business broadband packages become widely available within the next decade, working from home will be far more common and the morning commute for those who do head into work will be less crowded as broadband enables more diverse working patterns.

The upcoming general election could be decided on the merits of the various parties’ broadband plans according to experts.

The Conservative party is attempting to avoid a hung parliament, but the issue of rural broadband availability might scupper its bid for leadership as voters in the more isolated regions could be left out under its current strategies.

Analyst firm Point Topic has pointed out that the Conservative heartland is traditionally located in rural communities and that members of these constituencies will be hit the hardest if the party is elected.

This conclusion has been reached because Labour’s proposed broadband tax is something that the Tories are planning to scrap. This tax would be used to fund the expansion of broadband to areas in which current coverage is limited and speeds are inadequate.

By opposing the tax, Tories could risk alienating their core supporters, leaving them in a rather difficult situation.

Researchers worked out that of the 253 constituencies which are currently suffering from minimal broadband availability, the Conservatives could end up in control of up to 138 after the election.

The Conservatives had planned on investment being sourced from within the telecoms industry, with backing from big business. If this was possible, the tax would become redundant, but it looks as though the necessary funds will require some public money to meet the figures necessary to provide truly universal broadband access.

Simple Broadband’s Communications Manager Simon Gerrard said “All political parties will be looking hard at the broadband market in order to assess the kinds of services that UK citizens will need over the coming decade. Broadband is an essential commodity in the eyes of many and those areas which cannot be serviced with BT broadband deals will not want to miss out.”

Virgin Media is believed to be in the process of rethinking its marketing strategies in order to reach a wider audience and to encourage more people to look at its high speed fibre optic broadband deals rather than focusing on BT broadband options instead.

Advertising industry experts at Marketing Week revealed that Virgin Media has talked to the firms that run its many different campaigns and has challenged them to create a new selection of marketing options in order to bolster the public profile of cable broadband.

Broadening the appeal of broadband and making people more aware of the differences between ADSL and cable connections is a sensible idea, particularly now that BT is offering its own Infinity service, which some might assume is essentially the same as the Virgin Media offering, although this is not, in fact, the case.

Along with new ad campaigns, Virgin Media is also likely to overhaul its current line up of broadband deals, although how it will go about this remains unknown. It could well choose to focus on bringing 50Mbps deals down in price, making them more attractive to a wider audience, as the benefits of high download speeds and more consistent connections are key that Virgin Media is slightly underplaying compared to its rivals.

Virgin Media continues to innovate in its offering of broadband bundles that include home phone, digital TV and even mobile service provision along with cable connectivity. Perhaps it will focus on communicating just how convenient this type of bundle offering can be, particularly if value for money is of greater concern than download speeds and monthly data allowances to consumers.

Simple Broadband’s Simon Gerrard said “Virgin Media has always created some interesting advertisements, but perhaps it should take a leaf from Virgin Airlines and follow the classic mantra of ’sex sells’ to drag consumers away from BT broadband options.”

The changes that are currently afoot in the home broadband market are set to alter the face of the industry as we know it. Whilst it appears that landline customers are going to experience a rise in the cost of their services, people who opt for bundle deals will be getting a better price for their connections.

Starting in April, BT is altering the definitions of off-peak for its inclusive call package users, moving the start time in the evenings from 6pm to 7pm. However, according to a report from Simplydigital.co.uk there is a chance that BT broadband deals will be getting cheaper after O2 launches its own home broadband and phone service bundle, undercutting rivals on price.

O2 is going to combine the price of line rental and broadband into a one-off payment that will cost customers £17 each month on a 12 month contract. Considering that Virgin Media is putting up the cost of its line rental, people who had given up on ADSL broadband and moved to cable could well be switching back to save cash.

Not every consumer will be looking for value above all else in their home broadband packages and speed has recently proven to be an increasingly important factor as fibre optic broadband connections become more widely available.

In 2010 it seems as if there is a push within the telecoms industry to encourage consumers to put all of their eggs into one basket and sign on for multiple services from the same firm. Since the majority of broadband customers also require home phone and digital television in some form, it makes sense to save money and commit to a package.

Simple Broadband’s Communications Manager Simon Gerrard said “It is advisable to save money by opting for BT broadband deals with multiple services bundled together, although price comparison is more important than ever.”

A new report into broadband use by small and medium sized enterprises has discovered that nearly half of all small businesses are not making the most out of their broadband connections.

Analysis of numerous small businesses around the UK performed by Business Link has resulted in statistics showing that 45 per cent of small businesses do not have a website or a plan allowing them to market themselves online and bring in new customers.

Two thirds of respondents to a survey conducted by Business Link also said that they were very much in favour of creating and operating their own website. Even the 55 per cent of small businesses that do have their own websites are not taking full advantage of the extras offered by BT business broadband packages and others.

Business Link’s Tony Cattermole said that there was a growing gap between those small and medium businesses who had jumped on the broadband bandwagon and those that had not.

Mr Cattermole also said that the small businesses that really took advantage of all that a broadband connection and a website could offer were able to generate income, contact customers and provide the perfect place in which to advertise new services and products. Since websites are relatively cheap to set up and run, they are also a more efficient tool for marketing and communication for small businesses than traditional means.

Simon Gerrard, Communications Manager at Simple Broadband added that “Business broadband packages offer enterprises a cheap way in which to create their own online presence and creating a website is always an important step for any organisation. If the results of the survey are accurate on a wider scale, then thousands of UK businesses could benefit from comparing business broadband bundles, taking the plunge and catapulting their enterprise to the next level.”

As of January 25th 2010, new and existing BT Total Broadband customers in an enabled exchange area will be eligible for the up to 40Mb service. This will be one of the fastest broadband services available to customers in the UK.

More good news for BT customers is the price. They are charging as little as £19.99 per month for the 40Mb service, which is more than £7/month cheaper than Virgin Media’s high speed service. However, in balanced against that, the Virgin Media offer, it is 10Mb faster than BT, at 50Mb, and Virgin Media are also very reliable with their speed – if you pay for 50Mb, you will get very close to 50Mb nearly all the time. It remains to be seen if BT will be able to get close to the promised 40Mb with such regularity.

One factor that is definitely in BT Broadband’s favour is their upload speed. At 10Mb upload speed, it does put most of it’s rivals to shame, up to 6 times faster than Virgin Media. It is always worth remembering though, the advertised “up to” speed and the actual speed you get can vary greatly with BT.

By the end of 2010, BT are estimating that 4,000,000 homes and businesses will have access to this new faster service, and they expect many to take advantage. With online gaming on the up, a high speed connection is becoming a “must” for many households with teenagers, making their gameplay smoother, and this speed increase could even lead to a further boom in the online gaming sector.

After announcing the availability of its first fibre optic broadband connections for the consumer market, BT has said that its business arm will also be encouraging UK enterprises to switch to the high speed internet technology with a new package tailored to their specific requirements.

Although the business package will use the same fibre optic connections that will offer 40Mbps download speeds and 10Mbps upload speeds, businesses will be able to have their data traffic prioritised over home users during periods of peak use.

A fibre optic broadband connection will enable businesses to run advanced VoIP services and allow for video streaming and high quality conferencing. The growth of cloud computing for storage, backup and remote networking will also be facilitated by the new package.

The poor weather at the beginning of the year meant that many were stranded at home without any means of continuing to work, but with fibre optic broadband, businesses will be able to roll out a home working scheme as part of their continuity planning.

Nigel Stagg, Managing Director of BT’s business division, said that although over 50 per cent of businesses are currently enjoying the benefits of high speed broadband, BT is looking to expand its fibre networks so that every single enterprise and organisation in the UK has the opportunity to connect faster and do more.

When you compare business broadband packages you will now be able to take into account the four new BT bundles that make use of fibre optic technology. Simple Broadband’s Communication Manager Simon Gerrard said that “Upgrading to the latest broadband technology will be imperative for many businesses in the UK and BT’s new deals highlight just how far things have come and indeed how far they are set to go.”