Next summer will see the pilot of fibre to the kerb broadband from BT

As part of the £1.5bn network upgrade announced by BT in July of this year customers will see the rollout of fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) by the summer next year which will pave the way for super fast broadband access.

Whitchurch, South Glamorgan and Muswell Hill, London will become the first two pilot exchanges to be upgraded with the new FTTC. The two exchanges each provide services to around 15 000 customers. Technical trials of the FTTC are then planned by BT early next year in the Foxhall exchange area of Kesgrave, Suffolk.

The fibre-based services will then be sold on a wholesale basis to all the communications providers in the UK said the Openreach director of next generation access, David Campbell.

A cost of £5 to £10 plus VAT over the current telephony services has been indicated as the pricing for the new FTTC and will buy downloads of up to 40Mbps and uploads of up to 15Mbps.

Ebbsfleet Valley in Kent was the first to benefit from an earlier fibre to the premises (FTTP) installed by BT as part of its new build development. This offered downloads of 10Mbps for downloading and 2Mbps for uploads with pricing per premises of £230 plus a yearly rental of £36.

Upgrades are currently being carried out by Virgin Media, which will allow it to offer speeds of up to 50Mbps through its cable TV network. Current download speeds ranging from 4 – 20Mbps and uploading at 0.5 – 1.0Mbps at a price of £50 per month are being offered by Virgin Media’s business arm, NTL – Telewest.

A £30m fibre network is currently being built in North Wales for the Welsh Assembly by network operator, Geo, and is set to offer users both upload and download speeds of 10Mbps when it goes live in the new year.

The 15 000 user trials both set in different parts of the country would provide the telcos with “good data” on the probable interest and uptake with bandwidth resellers like internet service providers, their customers and BT Retail said a spokesman for BT. In relation to average end user numbers per exchange for the national FTTC service he said they currently had no ideas.

After consulting with various communications providers Campbell said that the sites were chosen after taking into account the devolved authorities, development agencies and other similar organisations feedback.

Campbell said “We also had to take into account current network topology and our ability to run testing procedures in the chosen areas. We have a good mix of areas, allowing us to test our products in both urban and semi-rural environments.” Detailed plans of the Openreach product being deployed for the initial market would be in the early part of 2010 said Campbell.