As its rivals gear up to take advantage of advances in fibre optic technology to offer multi-gigabit broadband speeds, the UK’s leading broadband provider Openreach has notified the comms industry that it plans to offer customers what it calls ‘turbo-charged’ speed tiers for when ordering a service over its ultrafast full-fibre network.
The new speed tiers build on the existing fibre-to-the-home (FTTP) portfolio which presently offers end customers the fastest full-fibre download speeds of up to 1Gbps – 115Mbps upload for homes and 220Mbps for business lines – with ‘real-world’ average download speeds starting at around 900Mbps.
Available to order from 1 April 2024, the two new tiers, which will push download speeds to 1.2Gbps and 1.8Gbps – said by the company to offer end users speeds up to more than 20 times the current UK median average – with both offering upload speeds of 120Mbps, will be available across Openreach’s full-fibre network which now reaches 13 million homes and businesses across the UK.
Openreach says the new speed tiers will give its Communication Provider (CP) customers the opportunity to sell what it calls “true” 1G and 1.5G products. The provider adds that its current pilot for both new FTTP tiers have performed “exceptionally well” with early adopter test results at its EE mobile division showing “consistently solid performance”. A number of other communication providers have now joined the trials.
“Demand for high-definition streaming, online gaming, video conferencing, and other bandwidth-intensive applications has spurred a huge increase in how much broadband data we all use – and consumption is rising every single year,” said Openreach product manager Matthew Sledge, commenting on the launch.
“Our new turbo-charged speed tiers demonstrate how our full-fibre network is future proofed to meet these ever-growing demands. And with the largest full-fibre footprint in the UK, we’ve made sure these new speeds can provide the biggest benefit and are available to all 13 million homes and businesses that can access our full-fibre network – whether people are living in a city, town or small remote village.”
Any new end customers signing up to a full-fibre service will have a new fibre optical network terminal (ONT) fitted as standard, enabling them to choose one of the new services. Customers with an existing full-fibre service, can upgrade to the new speed tiers via a ‘box-swap’ where an Openreach engineer will replace their existing ONT with a newer model. Communication providers will though also need to supply more capable routers.