BT trials fibre-to-the-premesis in London and Milton Keynes

Should bring upto 100Mbps speeds

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1 October 2009 15:31 GMT / By Duncan Geere

BT has announced that it'll be expanding its fibre-optic trials early next year to go all the way direct to the people's homes and businesses - a technology that the company is calling "fibre to the premesis". Currently fibreoptic connections only go through to the cabinet.

The trials will be taking place in Bradwell Abbey in Milton Keynes and Highams Park in North-East London. The trial products should see speeds of up to 100Mbps delivered to 20,000 homes and businesses in each area by around March 2010.

Fibre-to-the-cabinet services, which can deliver up to 40Mbps, have been in testing for some time and should be available to 1.5 million homes by next summer and 10 million by 2012. BT says that speeds on those connections could rise to more than 60Mbps in the near future. Upstream connections should reach upto 10Mbps.

David Campbell, Managing Director of Next Generation Access at Openreach, told Pocket-lint: "This trial is crucial for informing our plans to consider deploying FTTP alongside FTTC. Our FTTP deployment in Ebbsfleet has allowed us to learn a great deal about rolling out fibre directly to homes in greenfield areas and we believe that the technology has huge potential for brownfield areas too".

"We've worked closely with communications providers and regional development authorities in selecting these sites for the FTTP brownfield trial, and I'd like to encourage as many communications providers as possible to get involved in the trial".