Openreach’s G.fast Ultrafast Broadband Pilot Covers 390000 UK Premises

Openreach (BT) has announced that their new 330Mbps capable hybrid fibre G.fast broadband network is “now available” to thousands of people in Bath, Glasgow and Edinburgh, although none of the major ISPs have launched public packages and the final EMD phase still hasn’t begun.

Back in August 2017 the operator announced that their G.fast pilot would be expanded to include 26 additional locations across the United Kingdom (total of 46 locations) and this rollout was then “expected to reach a million premises by the end of the year” (here), although more recent updates have clarified that they actually meant “the end of the fiscal year” (BT’s financial year ends on 31st March 2018).

Openreach and BT Wholesale had originally said that G.fast’s Early Market Deployment (EMD) phase, which is the final phase after the pilot and before full commercial service availability, would begin in September 2017 (here) but it appears to be lagging a little behind that plan (ideally they should have completed a bit more than 390,000 premises by now).

A number of ISPs had also been planning to put their own public pilot packages live alongside, or slightly ahead of, the EMD phase during the October to November 2017 window but they now appear to have pushed those plans back into early 2018 (this doesn’t include Sky Broadband or TalkTalk, which have remained fashionably coy about their launch plans).

Industry sources have indicated to ISPreview.co.uk that the decision about whether or not to enter the next EMD phase will be taken soon (possibly during February) and if that’s accurate the earliest date for EMD would be around March / April 2018, which means that a full commercial launch seems unlikely to start before June 2018 at the earliest.

As it stands only a tiny number of ISPs actually have G.fast based packages and nearly all of those are still testing it as part of closed trials (see TalkTalk’s G.fast service), although we hope to see the first public pilot packages going live during Q1 2018 from a few smaller ISPs (assuming EMD isn’t further delayed).

We have asked Openreach to clarify their expectations for the commercial launch, although getting a reply during the Christmas week is perhaps an exercise in wishful thinking. In the meantime we anticipate that Openreach will throw out some similar “now available” style press releases for the other 26 pilot additions, which were first announced in August 2017 and are now slowly reaching completion.

However a lot of those with the desire to be early adopters may be disappointed when they realise that in a fair few areas the old FTTC (VDSL2) service can sometimes deliver a faster speed than G.fast tech, which prefers much shorter copper lines (ideally sub 350 metres). There’s a cross over point where we’ve been seeing VDSL2 speeds beat G.fast by a significant margin, although G.fast’s Fault Threshold of 100Mbps should help to keep some separation at the retail ISP level.

The 46 G.fast Pilot Locations
Armley, West Yorkshire
Balham, South London
Bath Kingsmead, Somerset
Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire
Bolton, Greater Manchester
Brierley Hill, West Midlands
Brighton Hove, East Sussex
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
Cherry Hinton, Cambridgeshire
Chorlton, Manchester
Derby, Derbyshire
Donaldson, Edinburgh
Eltham, South London
Gillingham, Kent
Glasgow Bridgeton
Glasgow Douglas
Glasgow Langside
Great Barr, West Midlands
Hammersmith, West London
Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire
High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire
Hunslet, West Yorkshire
Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire
Kidbrooke, South London
Liverpool Central
Lofthouse Gate, West Yorkshire
Luton, Bedfordshire
Manchester East
Mansfield, Nottinghamshire
Newbury, Berkshire
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newmarket, Suffolk
North Birmingham
Parsons Green, West London
Portsmouth North End
Pudsey, West Yorkshire
Rochdale, Manchester
Rusholme, Manchester
Sheffield, South Yorkshire
South Clapham, South London
St. Austell, Cornwall
Swansea, Wales
Swindon, Wiltshire
Upton Park, East London
Wandsworth, South London and
Whitchurch, South Glamorgan