Murphx, a UK network and telecoms solutions provider, has become the latest ISP to join trials of BT's next generation fibre optic cable based Fibre to the Cabinet ( FTTC ) broadband technology, which will initially deliver download speeds of up to 40Mbps (60Mbps in the future) and upload speeds of between 2Mbps to 15Mbps.

The pilot scheme, which began on 1st July 2009, is running for a period of up to 6 months from several BT exchanges, including Muswell Hill (London) and Whitchurch (Cardiff). BT is currently spending £1.5bn deploying FTTC, including a few minor/faster FTTP (100Mbps to 1000Mbps) installations at special Green and Brownfield sites.


For those unfamiliar with BT's plan; FTTC delivers a fast fibre optic link to the operators street level cabinets while the remaining connection, between cabinets and homes, is done using VDSL2 (similar to existing ADSL broadband but faster over short distances) over existing copper cable. Speeds of between 10Mbps to 40Mbps (variable) can be expected.

BT aims to start deploying FTTC from January next year and hopes to reach as many as 10m UK homes (40%) by 2012. Details of the first 100 or so telephone exchanges to be upgraded can be found HERE and HERE. Just to correct Carl Churchill’s quote, he should actually have said 2Mb and 5Mb - not 2MB and 5MB; the big ‘B’ signifies Megabytes’, while he should be speaking in Megabits.