BT has announced the first eight locations in the UK which will be able to get ultra-fast 330Mbps broadband on-demand.
Areas in High Wycombe, Bristol South, and St. Agnes (where the service was first trialled) will benefit from 330Mbps connections in July. Locations covered by Edinburgh’s Waverley exchange will be able to sign up for Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband from BT in September.
In these areas, services providing 330Mbps downstream and either 30Mbps or 20Mbps upstream will be trialled.
From March to May 2013, exchanges in Basingstoke, Cardiff, Manchester Central and Watford will run 330Mbps downstream and 30Mbps upstream lines.
As well as BT customers, other ISPs will be able to take part in the scheme – TalkTalk and Sky have announced that they’ll be using BT’s fibre network in the future but it’s not yet known if they’ll be taking part in this trial.
Eclipse Internet has nailed its FTTP colours to the mast already, so we’d expect to see it getting on board with BT’s live trial.
BT: 330Mbps on demand for all eventually
This is a two-part pilot scheme which will eventually see everyone able to get 80Mbps Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) from BT able to order in the ‘last mile’ on-demand, upgrading their line to FTTP and getting speeds of up to 330Mbps.
BT recently passed the 10 million mark for homes connected to its next-gen fibre network, which will eventually cover two-thirds of the UK.
Mike Galvin, Openreach’s MD Network Investment seems to think that FTTP on demand will mainly be of interest to small-to-medium businesses: “FTTP on Demand has great potential and so we are proceeding with these pilots.
Whilst we believe FTTC will be our mass market consumer product for some time yet, FTTP may be of interest to small and medium sized businesses and so we want to make it accessible throughout our fibre footprint.
This development can potentially help SMEs to compete both at home and abroad as well as maintain and create jobs across the UK.”
While true, we think that there will be some early adopters out there who’ll want 330Mbps fibre in their homes too.
Prices for customers have yet to be announced – we’re expecting that these details will become known next Monday.
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