Openreach Tweak Minimum Allowed G.fast Speed to 120Mbps

In an interesting development Openreach (BT) has decided to change the “minimum selling rule” for their hybrid fibre G.fast broadband lines from 100Mbps to 120Mbps, which means that UK ISPs won’t be able to sell the service to customers unless their lines can achieve downloads of 120Mbps+.

According to the brief announcement, “The purpose of the change is to improve customer experience and create more certainty for CPs when selling lines at the edge of the network.” Previously the fault threshold for G.fast was set at 100Mbps (here), which also happens to be the start of Openreach’s definition for “ultrafast broadband” performance (plus it helps to maintain some separation with older FTTC / VDSL packages that max out at just under 80Mbps).

Over the past year we’ve seen a few reports from people who were estimated a line speed of just a shade over 100Mbps but ended up with something far slower once connected. The decision to shift the minimum selling rule higher is certainly one way to help ensure that all those who connect with G.fast can actually receive an “ultrafast” speed, although it may also reduce the number of consumers who can order it (hard to be sure how much, could be tens of thousands or well over 100K, depending upon your model).

At the last count Openreach had made their 330Mbps capable G.fast broadband service available to 2,020,000 UK premises and they aim to cover around 5.7 million premises by the end of 2020.