The BT story involves a team of 62 engineers, deploying the service to 12 exchange areas briging high speed internet access to 'parts' of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Fine, Bothwell and Livingston said (left) BT Scotland's director.

The rollout connects 376 street cabinets with 125km fibre and a large amount of the work was carried out at night. Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) offers download speed up to 40Mbps and upload of 10Mbps.

Dr Lesley Sawers (right) CEO Scottish Council Development and Industry said “BT’s roll-out of super-fast broadband is essential to Scotland achieving its potential in the global economy. Our ambition is for the value of Scotland’s exports to double by 2020. Providing enhanced connections from Scotland to the rest of the world is a critical factor in achieving this.”

BT has announced plans to invest up to £2.5bn in super-fast broadband, available to around two-thirds of UK premises by 2015, assuming an "acceptable environment for investment," And it emphasises BT working in partnership: £30m in Northern Ireland for 85% of the population to a smaller scale initiative with Iwade parish in Kent where £13,000 public sector funding unlocked BT investment to bring fibre to all 1,350 premises.

In Scotland, Angus Broadband Cooperative Ltd  looks to have adopted a self-help approach and formed a community co-operative to provide next generation broadband through the Angus Glens area currently surveying the region.

"We now have detailed plans to provide a Fibre-to-the-Home (FttH) broadband connection to every property in the Angus Glens  (Glenisla, Glen Prosen, Glen Clova, Memus/Cortachy, Menmuir, Glen Lethnot, and GlenEsk.)  This includes (left) approximately 2,400 homes spread across some 500 square miles of rural glens," says the site.

PHASORS achieve phase noise elimination
Transmission of data through optical networks is currently limited by 'phase noise' from optical amplifiers and 'cross talk' induced by interaction of the signal with the many other signals (each at a different wavelength) simultaneously circulating through the network.

'Phase noise' is rapid, short-term, random fluctuations in the phase of a signal, which affects the quality of the information sent and results in data transmission errors. 'Cross talk' refers to any signal unintentionally affecting another signal.



Researchers working on the EU-funded FP7 PHASORS project, including Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden), The Tyndall National Institute at University College Cork (Ireland), the National and Kapodestrian University of Athens (Greece), and leading industrial partners Onefive GmbH (Switzerland), Eblana Photonics (Ireland) and OFS (Denmark) and led by the University of Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC),have made a major advance in the potential elimination of the 'phase noise' interference.


Work on the PHASORS project announced In the journal 'Nature Photonics'  the development of the first practical phase sensitive amplifier and phase regenerator for high-speed binary phase encoded signals.

The device, unlike others developed in the past, eliminates the phase noise directly without the need for conversion to an electronic signal, which would inevitably slow the speeds achievable.

The device takes an incoming noisy data signal and restores its quality by reducing the build up of phase noise and also any amplitude noise at the same time.



ORC Deputy Director and PHASORS director Professor David Richardson comments: "This result is an important first step towards the practical implementation of all-optical signal processing of phase encoded signals, which are now being exploited commercially due to their improved data carrying capacity relative to conventional amplitude coding schemes.



"Our regenerator can clean noise from incoming data signals and allow for systems of extended physical length and capacity. In order to achieve this result, a major goal of the PHASORS project, has required significant advances in both optical fibre and semiconductor laser technology across the consortium.

"We believe this device and associated component technology will have significant applications across a range of disciplines beyond telecommunications - including optical sensing, metrology, as well as many other basic test and measurement applications in science and engineering."