BT invites telcos to sign up to FTTP trials

BT has kicked off a trial and pilot scheme to which rival ISPs can sign up. It will run until mid-June this year. The national telco invited members of the next generation access (NGA) group to test out its "ultrafast" 330Mbit/s, 30Mbps upstream speed fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) download product and the company's up to 80Mbps …

[David Webb]

My exchange is upgraded for Fibre, my postcode is to get FTTP, but BT won't pull their finger out and actually turn on FTTP in areas that are supposed to get it!

[I'm Brian and so's my wife]

I walked past a box this morning and noted that it had a BT Fibre sticker on it - gimme, gimme, gimme!

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be nice if BT finally upgraded my 10,000 line adsl1 exchange long with some other exchanges round here - or OFCOM forced a proper price drop to represent the bargain bucket type service we get in terms of both speed and data allowance.

[welshie]

asymmetric speeds?

Fibre to the premises, with upstream bandwidth less than downstream bandwidth? Either they have some seriously weird network infrastructure, or they're offering as wholesale a product that is already artificially limited. What if the resellers want a proper symmetric service, as FTTP should achieve.

[Mark Wilson]

Great Bradwell Abbey gets the trial

Unfortunately BT still refuses to give those on our cabinet any fibre whatsoever leaving us with sub 2Mb/s speeds. Really is ridiculous that on the same exchange some can be getting 330Mbps whilst others get 1 on a good day with the wind in their favour.

[Trollslayer]

So it will be Openreach

I have Sky ADSL LLU, does what I want and the support was great when I needed it.We have an intern at work who is with Sky/BT wholesale and he has problems.

Sky customer services apologise to him for the stupid things they have to prove he has gone through before BT will get off their backsides.

[Jelliphiish]

Re: So it will be Openreach

that's the same all over. Openreach lurrve to charge.

[Anonymous Coward]

FTTC is so passe now ..

Living in a town with over 100,000 inhabitants and which is officially FTTC enabled I'd like BT to actually deliver FTTC to the cabinet at the bottom of the road rather than just declaring our town now has FTTC and going off and declaring another set of exchanges they plan to make "FTTC Enabled". There seems to be no plan for BT to ever extend their FTTC coverage in our town.. and then they wonder why people jump to other alternatives.

FTTP will no doubt be another complete headline grabbing farce and just a way of taking more money from the government.

[Bluenose]

Bradwell Abbey - What a laugh

My mate is on the Bradwell Abbey exchange, a speed check with BT tells him he will be lucky to get 1mb and event then it needs to dry weather and the day needs to have an "x" in it.

[chipxtreme]

Don't know why AC was downvoted for his comment but my exchange is also FTTC enabled but I still can't get it, seems they must of only upgraded the cabinets within a stones throw of the exchange as i'm about a mile away and best I can get is adsl2 syncing at 14000 yet at my old address half a mile away says 76mb, really annoys me

[.thalamus]

Yeah...

I have the same issue, my cab hasn't been upgraded, but the 'area' has apparently been enabled for FTTC.

I received a letter from BT (addressed to my address, not an unaddressed leaflet) the other day inviting me to sign up to BT infinity, so I tried and it's still not fucking available.

You would think they would have the brains to send letters to those who can get the service, not those who can't.

[Martin Saunders]

No modem thanks

If BT-OR want FTTC to be a hit with service providers they need to drop managed installs and let us have wires only. Modern routers are often ADSL and VDSL2 capable now, and it would allow a proper view of what is going on with the line (in terms of signal strength, errors, retrains) which the managed BT modem masks, let alone the benefits of removing another powered device which could fail.

Come on OR, drop the FTTC modem!

Martin Saunders

Product Director

Claranet

[Jon Massey]

only 330/30?

If it's FTTP, then why exactly aren't they offering GigE?

[Andy The Hat]

Another flight of fantasy ...

I have to agree with other posters. I'd much rather see most users getting a decent speed rather than a few getting stupid speed ...

I hate to imagine what the BT backbone speed would be like if 300+Mbps was implemented countrywide.