Posted: 24th Jun, 2009 By: MarkJ
Spitfire, the UK Internet access and Internet telephony operator, has become the latest ISP to be selected by BT Wholesale to take part in the first consumer trials of VDSL (Very High Speed Digital Subscriber Line) technology. Spitfire is one of nine ISPs in the UK , including Entanet and PlusNet , to have been selected for the trials.
We suspect that Spitfire actually meant to say VDSL2 , which is BT's "
last mile" solution for its next generation Fibre to the Cabinet ( FTTC ) based broadband network. A fibre optic link goes from BT to your local street cabinet and then broadband will be delivered at speeds of up to 40Mbps over existing copper telephone lines into your home via VDSL2.
The initial trial will offer download speeds of up to 40Mbps and 2Mbps upload (5Mbps uploads will be offered later in the trial). Like ADSL (8Mbps), the speed will be rate adaptive - based on the copper length and quality, though initial estimates suggest that over 99% of lines should handle at least 15Mbps.
Tom Fellowes, Sales Director for Spitfire, said:
“We are delighted to have been selected by BT Wholesale for this important trial. SIP trunks and hosted SIP telephony are now moving into the mainstream and VDSL will give an important boost to the take-up of these critical new comms technologies.”
The trial will 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). BT currently plans to spend £1.5bn rolling out FTTC services to reach as many as 10 million homes by 2012. It recently hinted that this could be expanded if the new broadband tax on fixed telephone lines gave it a boost (
here).