Posted: 09th Nov, 2011 By: MarkJ

Internet provider Be Broadband UK (BE) has responded to the growing uncertainty over its future superfast broadband plans by announcing the location of their
first service trial, which will take place at the
Barking (
Greater London) telephone exchange.
BE admitted in September that it was taking them "
longer than we originally thought to find a solution", which meant that their original plans to launch a service using up to 40Mbps+ FTTC technology before the end of 2011 had to be delayed.
Instead the ISP claimed that it was looking to trial a solution that involved "
installing more of our own equipment into the local exchange", which would better meet their desire to continue offering an "
unthrottled and unlimited" service.
A BE Spokesperson said:
"This will be a single-exchange trial to start with, and we’ll be contacting those of you in the exchange (Barking, in Greater London) to see if you’d like to receive the service for the duration of the trial. For those that do, in return for providing our trial service free of charge, all we’ll require from you is regular feedback and your help in ironing out any problems we may experience (it is a trial, after all!). Once underway, we’ll be able to provide regular updates on our progress and our plans for launching a country-wide service."
The newsletter was, according to the
BE Usergroup, reportedly sent to customers whom had put their names down as part of the ISPs
pre-registration programme for its future generation of "
fibre broadband" products.
BE recently announced plans to conduct a
major overhaul of its core network in 2012, which would improve capacity and provide better support for a number of future products (
here). Today's news is likely to be welcomed by BE's existing customers, although details of precisely what they have planned remain vague. We'll try to get some answers.