Broadband News

BT to offer ‘ultra-fast’ broadband

Friday 3 February, 2012

By Kelvin Goodson

Telecom giant will also double the speed of its current fibre service.

BT is to launch “ultra-fast” broadband offering speeds of up to 300Mb early next year.

The telecoms giant will now be able to deliver fibre to the premises (FTTP) broadband in areas where it was previously only able to offer fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) following successful trials of “FTTP on demand”.

FTTP means that fibre optic cable, which transmits data quickly and over long distances using pulses of light, is connected directly to customers’ properties. With FTTC, fibre is laid from telephone exchanges to street cabinets, but slower copper wire is used to connect customers to cabinets.

BT believe that FTTP on demand, which was trialled in St Agnes, Cornwall, has “the potential to transform the UK broadband landscape” as it could be made available anywhere within BT’s fibre network.

The service, which also offers fast upload speeds and will be tested further this summer, could be made available to all broadband providers by spring 2013.

This spring, BT will introduce a new, faster version of its FTTC broadband. This will allow it to offer speeds that are roughly double what it currently delivers, so speeds of up to 80Mb rather than up to 40Mb, and faster upload speeds of up to 20Mb.

Olivia Garfield, chief executive of Openreach, the division of BT responsible for nationwide communications infrastructure, said: “FTTP on demand is a significant development for Broadband Britain. Essentially, it could make our fastest speeds available wherever we deploy fibre.”

“We are also doubling the speed of our standard fibre broadband this spring giving ISPs [internet service providers] the chance to offer speeds of up to 80Mb,” she added. “This will ensure that residential customers have world class speeds for all their family’s needs.”

More than seven million homes and businesses are now able to get fibre broadband through BT, rising to 10 million this year and two-thirds of properties in the UK by the end of 2014.