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Speeds of up to 40Mb will be
available on the trial
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Wales and London to trial fibre broadband
Garnet Roach garnet@consumerchoices.co.uk
Broadband users in Muswell Hill, London and Whitchurch, South Glamorgan are to be the first to get fibre to the cabinet, BT has announced (14-10-08).
The two pilot schemes will allow up to 15,000 customers on each exchange to enjoy broadband speeds of up to 40Mb once fibre optic cables have been run to the street side cabinets that connect homes and businesses to BT (www.BT.com) exchanges.
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"[We have] no clear idea of the applications that are out there that people might need really high speed services for"
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A smaller trial involving just 30 homes will be run in Kesgrave, Suffolk early next year, before the two larger trials begin in summer 2009.
David Campbell, BT Openreach’s director of next generation access, said: “We are delighted to announce Whitchurch, South Glamorgan and Muswell Hill exchanges as the first sites chosen to pilot our fibre to the cabinet product.
“We have a good mix of areas, allowing us to test our products in both urban and semi-rural environments. These two sites were chosen from a shortlist and we expect to announce detailed plans for the initial market deployment of the Openreach product in early 2010, again following consultation with all interested parties.”
All broadband providers connected to the exchanges used in the trials will have the opportunity to offer customers the new next generation broadband services, and BT has said that it will keep the hardware in place once the pilots had ended.
Although a BT spokesman admitted that it had “no clear idea of the applications that are out there that people might need really high speed services for”, BT has pledged £1.5 billion to bring super fast, next generation broadband to 40 per cent of the country.
Michael Phillips, BroadbandChoices.co.uk product director, said: “It’s great that BT Openreach isn’t just focusing on urban exchanges in big cities. However, without further investment in a next generation broadband network, those parts of the UK that are connected to smaller, less viable exchanges will soon lag behind in an even greater digital divide.”
BT is also conducting a separate trial running fibre direct to thousands of homes and businesses at a large scale development in Ebbsfleet, Kent, which will allow speeds of up to 100Mb.
Virgin Media's (www.VirginMedia.com) 50Mb cable broadband product is expected to launch before the end of the year.
Related article - Boost your broadband speed.
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