BT trials FTTP on demand
February 3, 2012
BT has held successful trials of “FTTP on demand” in St Agnes, Cornwall. This solution allows additional fibre to be run on demand to a home or business in a Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) enabled area, providing the customer with ultra-fast Fibre to the Premise (FTTP) broadband.
Previously, FTTP speeds weren’t possible in FTTC enabled areas but BT has developed a solution that takes advantage of the fibre it has already deployed between the exchange and the street cabinet.
The technological development has the potential to transform the UK broadband landscape. This is because FTTP – which will soon offer end users speeds of up to 300Mbps – could be made available anywhere in BT’s fibre footprint where a customer requires it. BT will conduct further trials of FTTP on demand this Summer with a view to making the service commercially available to all communications providers by Spring 2013.
The service – which also delivers fast upstream speeds – is likely to be of particular appeal to small and medium size businesses who need to send and receive large amounts of data. The feedback from businesses in St Agnes has been excellent.
BT also said it will introduce a new faster variant of FTTC broadband this Spring. This service will deliver speeds that are approximately double those on offer today so downstream speeds will be up to 80Mbps rather than up to 40Mbps. Upstream speeds will also be faster at up to 20Mbps.
Both announcements came as BT revealed more than seven million premises can now access fibre broadband over its network. This figure will rise to ten million in 2012 and then to around two thirds of UK premises by the end of 2014.