BT Openreach Starts UK ISP Trial of 220Mbps FTTP Fibre Broadband

BTOpenreach has today started a four-week long technical trial for its new 220Mbps (Megabits per second) capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP product, which will be available from telephone exchanges in Bradwell Abbey, Chester South, Exeter and York (England).

The new 220Mbps (20Mbps uploads) service forms part of Openreach’s wider efforts to streamline its product portfolio by reducing the number of fibre optic broadband solutions from 10 to just 5 by March 2014.

Dave Jones, Openreach Product Manager, said:

“The introduction of this new bandwidth variant is to ensure that our customers can remain competitive in the marketplace, and to support the current restructure of the GEA-FTTP portfolio products and pricing.

The new product will provide the midway point in the product set between the mainstream 80Mbps downstream bandwidth and the top rated 330Mbps downstream product, ensuring that suitable services can be built upon the Openreach network for both Consumer and Business end-use customers alike.”

A full pilot of the intermediate 220Mbps product is still intended to follow from 1st March 2013 until 31st May 2013, with the commercial service set to launch shortly after that. No major problems are envisaged as it’s really just a slower and more affordable version of Openreach’s existing 330Mbps service.