110 street cabinets fibre-enabled

She said it was part of an estimated £30-£35m private sector investment across Northern Ireland.

Last summer BT said 89 per cent of lines in Londonderry would be connected to a fibre-enabled street cabinet by 2012.

Fibre-to-the-cabinet involves BT laying a fibre optic cable to the street cabinets allowing them to offer much higher broadband speeds (both download and upload) than traditional broadband over phone lines

Now Mrs Foster has advised: “There is no scope for additional investment under this programme as the Next Generation Broadband Project is now completed and in its operational phase. Under this contract, fibre services are now available from 1,265 street cabinets across Northern Ireland.

“This government investment of £19.5m levered initially some £32m of private sector investment. Prompted by the success of the project, BT has upgraded a further 783 cabinets across Northern Ireland under its own Next Generation Access programme. “This is on top of the 110 cabinets upgraded across Londonderry as part of the City of Culture preparations and other upgrades completed prior to this project. This is estimated to be a private sector investment worth some £30-£35m.

“Once complete some 2480 of the 2900 cabinets will be fibre-enabled across Northern Ireland meaning that some 89 per cent of telephone lines in Northern Ireland will be connected to an enabled cabinet.

“The project has been delivered on time, on budget, and in line with DFP spend approvals. Further investment in this or any other broadband project needs to be subject to a cost benefit analysis that indicates value for money for the public purse.

“My Department is in the process of examining options to improve broadband speeds, to ensure how the objectives set out in DETI’s Telecoms Action Plan 2011-2015 and by BDUK might best be achieved.”