Openreach rebuffs whiners with 1 gbps FTTP announcement

BT’s wholesale business unit Openreach has announced it will more than double the speeds available over its ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network.

The Openreach business has been under fire in recent months, as BT’s competitors have complained of poor service, preferential treatment to BT and inadequate technology to service non-BT customers in the UK.

The latest announcement claims new faster services will be available to homes and businesses across the entire FTTP network, which will double in size over the next 12 months and reach up to two million premises by the end of 2020. Maximum download speeds will now increase from 330 mbps to up to 1 gbps, and the initiative is part of the greater plan to make ultrafast speeds available to up to 12 million UK premises by 2020 using a mix of fibre technologies.

“We’re committed to taking the UK from being a superfast to an ultrafast nation, and whilst we’re extending the reach of our Fibre-to-the-Premises network, we’re also boosting the speed and variety of the services we can offer over it,” said Openreach CEO Clive Selley.

“We’ve been working closely with our wholesale CP customers to develop these new ultrafast products, and we expect the new higher speed services will be of particular interest to small and medium businesses.

“This is another example of how our mixed technology approach is getting the fastest possible speeds to the largest number of people in the shortest possible timeframe.”

Over the next couple of weeks, Openreach will offer a few new products to the market, one a 500 mbps product and a second 1 gbps option, which it believes will be of interest to smaller businesses. It must be hoping this will take the wind out of the sales of its many fibre doubters, but that seems unlikely.