Posted: 03rd Jun, 2009 By: MarkJ
UK ISP Entanet , a wholesale voice and data Communications provider that supplies a large number of virtual ISPs (vISPs) around the country (e.g.
ADSL24 and Aquiss ) , has confirmed that it too will be taking part in the much anticipated trials of BT's next generation Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) up to 40Mbps broadband technology.
In early May 2009 Entanet invited its channel partners to participate in the forthcoming FTTC '
customer trials', which run from 1st July 2009 for a period of up to 6 months from the BT exchanges at Muswell Hill (London) and, shortly afterwards, at Whitchurch (Cardiff). Entanet had previously participated in BT's Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) trials in 2008, which delivered speeds of up to 100Mbps to new build homes.
Entanet's Head of Marketing, Darren Farnden, explained: "[ BT WHOLESALE ] currently states up to 40Mbps downstream and up to 2Mbps upstream and there is an option to increase the upstream up to 5Mbps. This is achieved by connecting a street-located DSLAM to the serving exchange by a fibre and using VDSL 2 (Very High Bit rate DSL) technology. What this means is that the customer's experience should improve for applications such as video telephony, high quality voice, web browsing and video streaming."
Several Entanet partners are understood to have already asked to participate in the trials, for which only a limited number of end users are required. The trials will utilise end users' existing broadband lines, will require a BT engineer appointments and possibly a change of CPE hardware.
Today's news follows an almost identical item yesterday, which saw UK ISP Griffin Internet announced its involvement in the trials (
original news). BT currently plans to spend £1.5 billion rolling out FTTC and FTTP/H services to reach as many as 10 million homes by 2012.