BT Openreach, which is responsible for ensuring that all rival UK ISPs have equality of access to the local BT network, recently announced that its reduced Connection and Managed Install special offer on 'up to' 40Mb fibre optic ( FTTC ) based broadband services has been extended from 31st December 2010 to the 30th June 2011.

The standard connection/install (i.e. setup) price from BT usually costs £75 +vat, which includes both a VDSL2 modem and an engineer installation at the customer's premises. However BT has been running a discount for some time now, which cuts the connection fee to £35 +vat and Managed Install to £12 +vat.

Several UK ISPs, such as IDNet , Fast.co.uk and BT itself, have taken advantage of this to offer a lower price or no setup fee at all. Sadly some of the more business focused providers and related FTTC products still charge the full £75 +vat.

Fibre-to-the-Cabinet technology delivers a fast fibre optic cable to BT's street level cabinets, while the remaining connection (between cabinets and homes) is done using VDSL2 (similar to ADSL broadband but faster over short distances) via existing copper cable; FTTC can deliver speeds of up to 40Mbps, rising to 60Mbps in the future (uploads can reach up to 10-15Mbps).