Back in February of 2012, UK telecoms provider British Telecom announced that it had successfully trialled "FTTP on demand." FTTP, or Fibre to the Premise broadband, is an evolution of BT's FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) solution that allows additional fibre to be run on demand to a home or business in an FTTC-enabled area. BT said last year that while FTTP speeds weren't previously possible in FTTC-enabled areas, it had developed a solution that takes advantage of the fibre it had already deployed between the exchange and the street cabinet. At the time, the company said the development meant FTTP could be made available anywhere in BT's fibre footprint and relayed plans to make the service, which is capable of offering speeds of up to 300Mbps, commercially available to all communications providers by the spring of next year.
As you may (or may not) have noticed, we're in the midst of summer at this stage, but BT today provided an update on that ultrafast fibre broadband. Speaking via a press release, British Telecom confirmed that it would "soon" be offering ultrafast 300Mbps FTTP service to customers. Though BT did specify that the service would initially be available withing 50 exchange areas where FTTP infrastructure has been deployed to date, it didn't give any clue as to when "soon" might be. The company's Infinity 300Mbps FTTP service will come with 20Mbps upload speeds and existing FTTP customers can upgrade to the new speeds via the £50 Unlimited package from BT.
BT also announced a new router, the Home Hub 5, for BT Infinity customers. When it launches later this year, it will feature superfast 802.11ac Wi-Fi and 4 GigE ports and an integrated VDSL modem.
