Broadband Guide

BE fibre optic broadband

Updated: Wednesday 2 May, 2012

By Helen Thomas

BE has delayed the launch of its superfast broadband product.

Despite rapid expansion since launching the UK’s first ADSL2+ (double-speed copper wire) network in 2005, BE broadband (www.Bethere.co.uk) has yet to establish its presence in the superfast broadband market.

To find providers already operating fibre optic broadband in your area use our postcode checker.

Superfast broadband plans

In 2011, the managing directors of both BE and its parent company, Telefónica, which also owns O2 broadband (www.O2.co.uk), were talking up plans for fibre optic broadband.

However, since then, neither BE or Telefónica has made any significant developments. In fact, in April 2012, BE Broadband announced on its blog: "We're afraid we're not making very good progress on fibre. There are lots of reasons for this, but the bottom line is we're unlikely to launch a service across the BE network in 2012."

Following a request for customers to “pre-register to let us know where the demand is,” BE established that the demand for superfast broadband wasn’t limited to city centre hotspots as anticipated, but was in fact, nationwide.

Late in 2011, BE trialled fibre technology in Barking, logging impressive upload and download speeds, and it hasn't ruled out the possibility of superfast broadband coming to BE customers in some form before the year's end. It added: "We're still looking into launching a service on a limited basis later this year, combining our unshaped, unlimited network with the higher speeds of fibre-to-the-cabinet. It's just taking much longer than we'd like."

Unable to find a suitable fibre partner

BE originally planned to work with a partner with an existing fibre network, enabling it to save on the time and cost of creating its own fibre network from scratch - a solution it felt would be beneficial to its customers.

BE said: “An unthrottled and unlimited broadband experience across all our products will offer customers the best possible experience, and it is this approach that we want to bring to market through working with the right partner.”

However, to date, BE has been unable to “find a solution that meets the expectations of BE and our customers”.

Government broadband strategy

In 2010, culture secretary Jeremy Hunt outlined plans for the government’s £830 million strategy to deliver the best broadband network in Europe by 2015, leaving broadband providers in a race to keep up in the delivery of superfast, fibre broadband.

Virgin Media and BT are currently the frontrunners with multi-millions already invested in their fibre networks, and ambitious plans to increase download speeds into triple figures.

The benefits of fibre?

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

• Consistent connection speeds regardless of how many people in the house are online at the same time - great for family households or shared student residences
• Download entire albums, TV shows or even HD films in just minutes
• Watch streamed films or TV without experiencing buffering delays
• Complete games without battling connection lag as well as your opponents

Fibre optic v traditional phone line

The successor to dial-up connections, broadband revolutionised our internet usage. Delivered via the UK’s long established network of copper telephone wires, broadband delivered fast (at the time) connection speeds, eliminated the need to dial-in each time you wanted to get online, and didn’t tie up your home phone line while you were web surfing.

But things have moved on.

Fibre optic is the next-generation of broadband. Fibre cables are made for megafast data transfer and, unlike its telephone wire predecessor, it experiences nothing like the degree of speed degradation over distance or due to the poor quality of the line.

So, where broadband delivered over the telephone network regularly declines to half, or less, of the advertised “up to” speed, fibre optic cables maintain speeds so providers can boast average actual speeds of 80%-plus of the advertised speeds.

BE broadband packages