BT's super-fast 330Mbps fibre landing in six weeks

BT Openreach, the infrastructure division of BT, has confirmed that its up-to-330Mbps fibre service will be launched within weeks.

People may soon be able to sign up for services that offer download speeds of up to 330Mbps with their current ISP thanks to BT Openreach's super-fast service. Image credit: BT

From 2 July, communication providers will be able to resell the BT super-fast service to their customers, a spokesman for the telco told ZDNet UK on Wednesday.

"We are ready to move from early market deployment to full commercial launch for our Generic Ethernet Access (GEA) over fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) product portfolio with effect from 2 July, 2012," Openreach said in a statement on Tuesday.

In addition to some of the fastest retail download speeds available, the service will offer upload speeds of up to 30Mbps.

However, consumers keen to get their hands on the fastest speeds in town will most likely be disappointed, as the service requires full FTTP connectivity, rather than the significantly more common fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC), which uses copper to connect the last stretch between the premises and the cabinet.

The lack of FTTP-enabled exchanges nationwide means that only a small number of premises (PDF) will be eligible to sign up for the service. The exchanges currently enabled for FTTP are Ashford in Middlesex, Bradwell Abbey in Milton Keynes, Highams Park in North London, Chester South, St Austell and York, a BT spokesman confirmed.  

This is likely to improve in spring 2013 when BT begins offering its FTTP-on-demand service — essentially, the on-demand replacement of the last copper element between the cabinet and the premises with fibre optic cable — but the company has yet to say how much the on-demand service will cost, or what its set-up fees will be.

A spokeswoman could not confirm whether the retail arm of BT would be offering the service directly to its customers from 2 July at the time of writing.