Britain set to get 300Mbps broadband from next year

Do you live in one of the six lucky areas?

BT Openreach will make a broadband service of 300Mbps available in the UK next yearPhoto: Shutterstock

BT has announced that parts of Britain will get 300Mbps broadband from early next year.

The service will be provided in six areas of the country where BT Openreach is making fibre to the premises (FTTP) available. FTTP is where fibre-optic cable is laid directly to homes and businesses rather than stopping at street cabinets.

The superfast FTTP service will be made available through exchanges at Ashford in Middlesex, Bradwell Abbey in Milton Keynes, Highams Park in North London, Chester South, St Austell and York.

It will be available from late October and will initially be available at speeds of 110Mbps down and 15Mbps up, with speeds of 300Mbps down available from next spring. Any ISP who piggybacks on the BT Openreach network will be able to sell on the service to customers.

The 110Mbps speed will be the fastest available on a national network in Britain, just topping the 100Mbps service offered by Virgin Media. BT is also trialling a 1Gbps FTTP offering in Kesgrave in Suffolk.

Yesterday BT Openreach also announced it will double the speeds offered through fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) on its network, with speeds increasing to 80Mbps.

BT is investing £2.5bn to make fibre broadband available to two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2015. At present, BT has more than 200,000 customers using its Infinity service, which offers speeds of up to 40Mbps.

Communications minister Ed Vaizey said in a statement: "These are significant announcements and good news for the UK. High-speed broadband is essential for economic growth, which is why we want the UK to have the best superfast broadband in Europe by 2015."