UK ISP Easynet Launch Business 320Mbps Bonded FTTC Broadband

Communications provider Easynet has today launched its new EtherStream V product for business clients, which can bond multiple 80Mbps capable FTTC lines together to deliver a theoretical peak download speed of up to 320Mbps (four lines).

Unfortunately the 320Mbps service won’t be available for “a few months” and initial customers will instead be offered a 160Mbps package (two bonded FTTC lines). As usual it’s important to stress that these are headline (advertised) speeds and the real performance could be significantly less.

Fibre-to-the-Cabinet services tend to deliver broadband download speeds of between 2Mbps and 80Mbps, which is usually dependent upon how far away you live from your local street cabinet. On top of that no bonding solution is perfect and you rarely get exactly double the speed (some performance loss is to be expected).

Justin Fielder, Easynet’s CTO, said:

“EtherStream V has a well-deserved place in the Easynet hall of fame for industry firsts, and reinforces our reputation as an industry pioneer. It demonstrates the time we take to listen to our partners and customers, to understand their businesses challenges and to quickly deliver products which address these challenges head-on.

This is a fantastic opportunity for partners to add to their portfolio a unique, exclusive product, and combine it with their own service wrap, consultancy services and in-depth knowledge of their customers.”

The new service, which is being rolled out across the UK over the next 12 months and should be available to around 70% of businesses by March 2014, will also be backed up by a “stringent” Service Level Agreement (SLA).

If it’s anything like Easynet’s other EtherStream products then you can probably also expect a 1:1 contention ratio, 99.9% uptime assurance, 24×7 network monitoring and customer support, DSL backup options, unlimited IP addresses and more. The idea being to offer a leased line style service but at a “fraction of the cost”.