BT, via Openreach is conducting the first trial for the new ultrafast broadband technology, G.fast which can deliver speeds of up to 330Mbps on plain old copper. The trial which is scheduled to take place in Huntingdon, a market town in Cambridgeshire, will see two thousand homes and businesses being covered by the service. According to BT, the trial will run for 6-9 months, allowing Openreach as well as BT’s R&D division to assess the technical performance of the technology across a large footprint.
BT said that if the trial is proven successful, it aims to start deploying the G.fast technology in 2016/17 alongside its fibre-to-the-cabinet and fibre-to-the-premises services. The company believes that G.fast will enable it to make speeds of a few hundred megabits per second available to millions of homes by 2020 and deliver up to 500Mbps to most of the UK within a decade as the technology is developed further.
Joe Garner, CEO Openreach
We want to stay ahead of the competition and so it’s good to see this continued investment and innovation in the industry. BT is harnessing its world-class technology and engineering expertise to help the UK lead the way on ultrafast broadband and remain a world leading digital economy. Today is the start of a new chapter in building Britain’s connected future. This is the largest trial of G.fast technology in the world and it builds on the pioneering research of BT’s world-class R&D teams.
