BT Not Expecting to Deploy Faster UK FTTC Broadband Speeds in 2013

BTOpenreach, which maintains and manages access to BT’s national UK telecoms network, has told ISPreview.co.uk that it has “no current plans” to introduce faster FTTC based broadband ISP speeds beyond the current headline rate of 80Mbps (Megabits per second).

BT sources have previously hinted at the possibility of pushing FTTC to speeds of 100Mbps+ (possibly 120Mbps to match Virgin Media’s top-end package) and Openreach’s own engineers have, on occasion, been known speak about at the prospect of a higher headline rate surfacing possibly as soon as this summer.

However Openreach also stressed that they’re keeping “all technical options under constant review” and the recently confirmed trials of Vectoring (VDSL2) technology would certainly support that (here). So while we might not see a commercial speed boost for FTTC this summer, it still hasn’t been ruled out for the future and they are still looking at faster rates. The confirmation may also reduce the pressure on Virgin Media to increase its speeds, at least for now.

As a side-note BT recently said that Vectoring, which slashes crosstalk interference to improve FTTC performance, will be used more as a “speed enabler” than a speed booster (i.e. the headline rate won’t be increased but those with longer lines might eventually see better speeds than they do today); assuming they can make it work for everybody.

Separately BT’s new FTTP-on-Demand (FTTPoD / FoD) service, which makes top FTTP speeds of 330Mbps available to all existing FTTC lines, has today begun its early market deployment (similar to a full commercial launch but without the same guaranteed service levels as a final product). But this is more of a business focused solution and would cost some home owners thousands of pounds to install (details).