Northern Ireland tipped to become a leader in fibre broadband

BT's plans for the development of Northern Ireland's fibre optic broadband infrastructure have been tipped to put the country ahead of many of its European counterparts.

Frank McManus, the company's head of wholesale services for Northern Ireland, told the Belfast Telegraph that BT currently has 3,000 street cabinets across the nation, with 2,500 of these set to receive fibre broadband by March 2012.

At present, only around 54 per cent of home telephone lines are connected to BT's super-fast network, but this figure will rise to 88 per cent once the work has been completed.

"Northern Ireland will be way ahead of its main international competitors, not just by March 2012 but still by March 2015," he claimed. "We will be ahead of Germany, Great Britain and others."

Mr McManus went on to describe the rollout as a "massive" engineering task, revealing BT is planning to take on another 60 staff to help with the project.