Thinkbroadband has an update on the consultation process that BT Openreach has been conducting on the subject of Fibre To The Premises (FTTP) broadband technology. Limited trials of a Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) are apparently being mooted for sometime next year.

It's claimed that a GPON system should be able to manage distances of up to 16km, possibly reaching 100km at later dates. Perhaps of more interest is the update TB carry regarding Ebbsfleet's Fibre trials, which some may recall from earlier in the year (here):


This is a very interesting development and talk of residential speeds reaching 40Mbps downstream and 20Mbps upstream will no doubt raise the odd eyebrow.

However ISP's need not worry about how they'd afford such bandwidth, BT has been playing the cautious card and won't want to deflect too much attention away from its forthcoming ADSL2+ services just yet. It’ll be a fair few years before ADSL is retired and even then VDSL2 could fill the gap.