BT to guarantee 15Mbits/sec with fibre

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 2 Jul 2009 at 11:57

BT will guarantee connection speeds of at least 15Mbits/sec on its forthcoming fibre network.

The company is accelerating its nationwide fibre rollout, and now plans to connect a million premises by next March, and 1.5 million by next summer.

The good news for small business customers is that BT plans to guarantee the speed of the connection on fibre lines.

"There will be an SLA [service level agreement] associated with the product," said David Campbell, managing director of next-generation access at BT Openreach. "We will accept a fault and fix it if the line drops below 15 meg."

BT's fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) lines will offer download speeds of up to 40Mbits/sec, but BT claims the upload speeds will be more impressive.

"The headline speed is fantastic," claimed BT's group director of strategy and portfolio, Olivia Garfield. "But the uploading capability is the USP [unique selling point] for this service."

BT has announced that the FTTC lines will have two tiers of upload speed: five and 10Mbits/sec. However, Garfield said BT "will go faster later this year", with Campbell suggesting that uploads could hit 15Mbits/sec.

Those lucky enough to get fibre to their front door (fibre-to-the-premises) will see download speeds of up to 100Mbits/sec and uploads of 40Mbits/sec, although BT admits that FTTP will be limited to new builds and selected urban areas.

BT has already revealed the first 29 exchanges to be connected to its fibre network, and will announce a second tranche of exchanges next week.