BT in Ireland has a world class communications infrastructure, with the largest fibre network on the island. We are continuing to make significant investment in our network infrastructure to ensure that we are underpinning our customer’s growth and success, and we have a large and highly skilled engineering workforce who are dedicated to maintaining, upgrading and future-proofing our network in Ireland.

There are over 1100 BT engineers in Ireland working around the clock to provide the highest level of service for our customers. The team is made up of jointers, planners, field engineers and network operations managers - the range of skills and experience is wide and varied.

The network is the backbone of our business and is the platform from which we offer the services that our Wholesale customers need to succeed in the communications market. We are very proud of the reach, capabilities and reliability of our network in Ireland – below are a few key facts.

ROI

BT is an ‘other licensed operator’ in ROI competing against the incumbent Eircom. We have our own considerable fibre network with nodes in all of the major areas of the country.

• Our fibre network in ROI consists of approximately 2000 km of fibre running along the rail network and approx 500 km of fibre along the road network
• LLU – we have 43 LLU exchanges in ROI with 17 more planned by May 2011. This allows us to offer our own broadband products to our wholesale customers – eliminating our reliance on the incumbent eircom. In areas where we do not have LLU capabilities we can still avail of Eircom’s wholesale bitstream services to reach end customers
• In terms of our next generation Ethernet capability we have 23 ethernet POPs around the country from which to serve corporate and wholesale customers with WAN services. We also have agreements with BT-approved 3rd party suppliers of access circuits to our Etherflow network – giving us the widest reaching Ethernet product in the Irish market. The product is low cost, flexible and scalable – with 22 different speeds available between 512kbps and 1Gbps
• The BT network offers international access from and to the Republic, with 2 independently routed sub-sea high capacity links providing the highest speeds and resilience to INEX, the London Internet Exchange, UK, and the rest of the world. The DWDM (Dense Wave Division Multiplexing) subsea links each have 2.5Gbps capacity and offer complete resilience to national and international traffic linking customers directly to 120 countries and 250 cities worldwide.

NI

BT are the incumbent operator in NI – owning the PSTN network – we offer a full range of retail and wholesale products and services from telephone lines to superfast 40Mbps broadband to next generation networks for corporate customers.

• BT’s communications infrastructure in Northern Ireland is considered to be one of the most advanced in the UK, and Europe. We have one of the highest average densities of fibre in Europe at approximately 200,000 Km, enough to circle the globe five times!
• There are 191 telephone exchanges in NI – all landlines are connected to these to provide telephone and broadband services - all of our exchanges allow ‘up to 8Mbps’ broadband, and 17 of these offer ‘up to 20Mbps’ ADSL2+ broadband
• As part of its 21st Century Network programme, BT is introducing fibre-based superfast broadband with speeds of ‘up to 40Mbps’ to homes and businesses in a number of locations in Northern Ireland, with Balmoral, Lisburn and Bangor the first to go live.
• In NI BT won a contract with DETI (Dept of Enterprise, Trade and Investment) to roll out faster broadband speeds for local businesses – with 85% of urban businesses receiving >15Mbps and 85% of rural businesses receiving >2Mbps (residential customers connected to these same cabinets can avail of the faster speeds too)
• The DETI programme will see more than 1176 street cabinets upgraded to VDSL technology to allow connected customers to receive ‘up to 40Mbps’ superfast broadband
• In terms of next generation data connectivity BT has 26 points of presence (POPs) for next generation Ethernet – our flexible, scalable, low cost WAN product
• BT’s network offers unrivalled international access from and to Northern Ireland, with 3 independently routed sub-sea high capacity links providing the highest speeds and resilience to the LINX, the London Internet Exchange, UK, and the rest of the world. The subsea links each have 40Gbps capacity. These links, using Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM), offer complete resilience to national and international traffic linking customers across Northern Ireland directly to 120 countries and 250 cities worldwide.