UPD Digital Region Boost FTTC Superfast Broadband Speeds in South Yorkshire

Customers of the financially scarred Digital Region superfast broadband ISP network, which serves 80% of premises across South Yorkshire (England, UK), look set to see even faster internet speeds from next month after it was revealed that the alternative telecoms operator has a “phased network upgrade” planned.

Details of the upgrade remain scarce, although business ISP Fluidata let slip that Phase 1 of the roll-out is expected to begin in December 2012. It’s understood that this will involve an upgrade to the cards in “certain [telephone] exchanges“, which should improve the operators Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) based services, albeit ONLY for customers “at the higher end” (allowing the line to achieve even faster speeds if capable).

At present DR’s network can deliver speeds of up to 70-80Mbps (Megabits per second), which is similar to BT’s own FTTC solution, although customers of some providers (e.g. Origin Broadband) have already been lucky enough to reach roughly 100Mbps with the top Origin Max package.

Unfortunately we’ve not been able to find any specifics about precisely what the change itself will do (another MHz profile increase perhaps?) or what kind of speeds may now be possible. We’ve asked a couple of the DR ISPs and one has kindly promised to hunt down more information. We hope to update this article with more details soon..

UPDATE 10:52am

Another Digital Region source has privately suggested to ISPreview.co.uk that the real reason for the change could be because the current crop of line cards are said to be “incapable” of supporting the speeds that they have been advertising, which is apparently why some ISPs still promote the 40Mbps top speed instead of anything higher. However we have seen some customers with faster performance so it doesn’t appear to affect everybody.

The source said they would be “surprised” if it actually involved another large scale infrastructure change because of DR’s current financial problems and massive pile of public debt, especially with a new owner expected to be selected next month.