BT has announced an upgrade to its Openreach FTTP (Fibre-to-the-Premises) which will see the speeds it offers more than triple, up to 1Gbps from 330Mbps. The new faster services will be available to anyone on the FTTP network, which currently spans 327,000 homes and businesses. The company will also launch a new 500Mbps product, with both being available from December 6, 2016.
Regarding pricing, the 1Gbps (download) / 220Mbps (upload) will cost £80 per month, while the 500Mbps / 165Mbps offer will cost £55 per month, and each will come with an additional £500 connection fee. The FTTP network, which is capable of such speeds, will double in size over the next 12 months, with a goal of reaching two million people by the end of 2020.
Openreach CEO, Clive Selley, commented on the new offers saying:
“We’re committed to taking the UK from being a superfast to an ultrafast nation, and whilst we’re extending the reach of our Fibre-to-the-Premises network, we’re also boosting the speed and variety of the services we can offer over it.
We’ve been working closely with our wholesale CP customers to develop these new ultrafast products, and we expect the new higher speed services will be of particular interest to small and medium businesses.”
Openreach has been trialling a 1Gbps tier product for a while, with part of this involving the testing of new processes and techniques – including ‘plug and play’ technology – to deploy FTTP more quickly and efficiently across the UK. The successful trials have cut installation times down from requiring multiple visits by an engineer to a simple two-hour appointment.
Source: BT via ISP Review