Oldham will be first to get super-fast broadband

Oldham will be among the first areas to benefit from super-fast broadband services next year, BT announced today.

More than 40,000 customers in Oldham, Failsworth, Bury, Didsbury, Heaton Moor and Rusholme will get the service as part of a £1.5 billion project, the largest investment in super-fast broadband in the UK.

BT’s local network business Openreach will be making fibre optic-based services available in early 2010 to more than 41,000 homes and businesses in Oldham, and more than 23,000 in Failsworth.

Speeds of up to 40 Mb/s will initially be available to more than 140,000 homes in the first areas, with the prospect of rising to 60Mb/s.

The speeds are more than 10 times those experienced at the moment by most UK households. The next set of locations, serving a further million homes and businesses, will be announced in the autumn.

They will give customers enough speed to run multiple bandwidth applications such as allowing some members of a family to watch different HD movies while others are gaming or working on complex graphics or video projects.

As well as being able to download graphics and data much more quickly, users will benefit from substantially improved “upstream” speeds of up to 10Mb/s — the highest in the UK. Customers will be able to post videos, experience HD video conferencing and enjoy interactive HD gaming to the full.

It is the first major phase of the UK’s biggest ever investment programme in superfast broadband.

BT has pledged to spend £1.5 billion by 2012 to ensure 40 per cent of UK homes and businesses — or 10 million premises — can enjoy fibre-based super-fast broadband.

Mike Blackburn, BT’s regional director for the North-West, said: “Super-fast broadband is essential to this region’s future, so it is great to announce this initial set of locations”