AAISP Launch New UK G.fast Ultrafast Broadband Service Trial

Internet provider Andrews & Arnold (AAISP) have today become the latest to launch a 160Mbps download and 50Mbps upload capable (maximum potential speed of the tier) G.fast based “ultrafast broadband” package as part of a new trial, which may be followed later by a 330Mbps capable plan.

At present the new hybrid fibre G.fast technology is only available to a little over 1 million UK premises, although Openreach are aiming to cover 10 million by the end of 2020 (see the latest rollout announcement). AAISP will charge a premium of +£10 extra per month for the new service above their existing Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) product, which means that their cheapest option with line rental will start at £55 inc. VAT per month with 200GB of usage or £70 with 1000GB.

A&A will also cover the cost of the install/migration on an existing phone line (i.e. FREE install) and a discounted ZyXEL VMG3925 router is available for £25. The installation will be carried out by an Openreach engineer who will provide the modem (Huawei MT992).

Alex Bloor, General Manager of A&A, said:

“We have reached a point where, practically speaking, many users will not notice the difference between an 80Mbit service and a 160Mbit service most of the time. Even a 4K video stream, for example from Netflix, will only use a fraction of the available capacity on an 80Meg link. But what many of our customers really will benefit from is the higher uplink speed.

As services like Dropbox are still gaining popularity, so the customer wish to synchronise seamlessly into the cloud becomes more and more common. And theoretical 50Mbit/sec upload should help greatly with this. Of course, the higher downstream speeds are nice too, when downloading OS updates or games, but we think it will be the upload speed that is most noticeably useful within our demographic.”

The price point and usage caps currently make A&A the most expensive G.fast provider on the market, although they are more aimed at business users and have stronger service quality than most other ISPs. As this is a trial then at present you can only purchase the service by running through the ‘Availability Checker‘ on their website to see if it’s available (if so then you have to email trial@aa.net.uk in order to progress an order).