Broadband Guide

O2 fibre optic broadband

Tuesday 6 December, 2011

By Helen Thomas

Despite publicly announcing initial ambitions for superfast broadband, O2 has yet to make any official announcements regarding its developments in the fibre optic market.

O2 (www.O2.co.uk) has not established its own broadband network. Instead, for its regular broadband delivery, O2 utilises the telephone wire network of its sister company BE broadband (www.Bethere.co.uk), which is also owned by Spanish telecoms giant Telefónica.

Fibre plans put on the back burner

In June 2011, Felix Geyr, managing director of O2 Broadband, and Chris Stening, managing director of sister company BE, were mutually talking up their future plans for fibre optic broadband. In his June blog, Geyr said that while he couldn’t give many details at that stage, he was “delighted to tell customers that O2 aims to launch a commercial [fibre service] trial later this year.”

However, O2 has not made any further official comment on the matter or release details of when or where trials will take place.

To check the fibre broadband products available in your area, visit our postcode checker.

Government broadband strategy

Since 2010, when culture secretary Jeremy Hunt outlined the government’s £830million strategy to create the best broadband network in Europe by 2015, the superfast race has been on for broadband providers.

BT broadband (www.BT.com) and Virgin Media (www.Virginmedia.com) have already invested heavily in their fibre network and have plans to increase speed and coverage that, at present, look to leave other providers standing.

The benefits of fibre?

There are a range of benefits to a fibre optic connection:

• Consistent speeds regardless of how many people are using the same connection at the same time - perfect for family households or student accommodation
• Super-speedy download times for albums and TV shows, even high quality films can take just minutes
• An end to buffering delays meaning uninterrupted film and TV streaming
• Gamers won’t face frustrating connection lags as they play.

Fibre optic vs traditional phone line

After dial up, broadband completely revolutionised the way we used the net. Delivered via the telephone network, it meant faster connection speeds, no delay while connecting and no dropped connections. It meant families no longer had to argue about who was tying up the phone line while they were online. Great stuff, but unsurprisingly things have moved on again.

Fibre optic is now considered to be the broadband future. Fibre cables are made for lightning fast data transfer and they don’t suffer the same level of speed degradation with distance from the exchange or due to the poor quality of the line.

This means providers using a fibre network can deliver actual speeds that users with traditional broadband connections - where average speeds are generally only between 30-50% of the “up to” speeds advertised - can only dream of. Fibre connections can enable speeds of between 80-100% of the top advertised speeds.

O2 broadband packages