What the Big Build involves

This is the largest ever single European investment in superfast broadband infrastructure and it's an incredibly complex engineering project.

• 130,000 km of fibre optic cable of about a hair's width is being physically installed by BT's local network business, Openreach - this is enough to circle the globe three times!

• Engineers need to audit every major aspect of the local network, checking hundreds of thousands of engineering records and preparing hundreds of individual planning applications

• Engineers need to upgrade more than 500 green roadside cabinets that connect Cornish homes and businesses to the 100 telephone exchanges in the county with new fibre optic technology

• Each exchange area may have four or more different types of fibre or alternative technology deployed, some of which are cutting edge!

• Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC)
• Fibre To The Premises (FTTP)
• Fibre for 'exchange only' lines
• Alternative technologies, including wireless and satellite

• Over 100,000 telephone lines across Cornwall and Scilly all have to be manually re-terminated (and each one takes between two and eight hours to do!)

• In the tens of thousands of premises supplied with fibre connections directly to the home or business, street work engineering may also be needed to lay the ducting that protects the cables safely underground.

• Engineers need to ensure that the electrical power supply connecting each of the exchanges and cabinets is sufficient to support the new technology being installed - and work with the local electricity supplier to install new electrical connections where it is not.

• Around 150 Openreach engineers will work a total of 60,000 days to build our new network, and as this is new technology, they each need to have specific training. Specialist engineers are now being trained to install superfast broadband across the county from a new dedicated training centre at Bodmin.

• Another 75 Openreach engineers will be coming out to connect individual homes and businesses to the service as people place orders. 

• If half of premises connect, this will take a total of over 400,000 man hours - all before 2015!