ISPs can now sign up customers to 330Mbps fibre-to-the-premises broadband when a UK trial finishes on June 11.
BT Openreach is launching FTTP in three speed categories: 80Mbps down and 20Mbps up; 330/20Mbps and a top speed of 330/30Mbps.
The UK telecoms infrastructure operator has also announced a 220Mbps product, which will go live in early 2013.
The existing 40/2Mbps, 40/10Mbps, 40/15Mbps, 100/15Mbps, 110/15Mbps and 100/30Mbps services will also continue, with new prices.
BT Openreach has also announced trade prices (shown below) for the new service (stripped of VAT or profit margins), with an £80 connection fee and top price of £60/month for 330/30Mbps.
There are also a set of cheaper ‘transition product’ variants available to ISPs who also supply unbundled line rental for voice services, and special offers on the 330/20Mbps and 80/20Mbps speeds.
BT Openreach FTTP prices (ex VAT)
The 330/20Mbps option is being offered at a heavy 37 per cent discount for just £15.60/month plus line rental (or £24/month without), to ‘test this high bandwidth in the home environment’. The special offer will be available until January 31, 2013, and will be held until January 2014.
There’s also a special offer on the 80/20Mbps service for ISPs who sign up by the end of September, at £8.95/month with line rental (£17.34/month without).
None of the UK’s big ISPs have publicly announced FTTP, but Openreach said anyone already offering fibre-to-the-premises will be ready for the new speeds.
At the moment that’s limited to BT Retail on the Openreach network, but hopefully several new ISPs have been involved in the recent Openreach trial.
In addition to training engineers and other upgrades, ISPs will have to pay £2,000 for each exchange to access BT Openreach’s fibre-enabled customer base.
BT Openreach and an undisclosed group of ISPs are currently running technical trials which will let them run FTTP from the majority of FTTC exchanges and cabinets.
NOTE: An earlier edit of this story named Hyperoptic as a provider of BT Openreach FTTP broadband. This is not the case.
UPDATE 23/05/12: Eclipse Internet is the first UK ISP to announce it will offer up-to-330Mbps FTTP broadband later this year.
UPDATE 15/06/12: BT has told us that details of the commercial launch for its FTTP service will now be announced on the 2nd of July.
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