I’ve been accepted on BT’s Ultrafast Broadband trial. This new technology is based on G.fast technology and was trailed by BT in the summer of 2015 in Huntington (Cambridgeshire) and Gosforth (Newcastle), with further pilot sites in 2016 in Cambridgeshire and Kent. BT are expanding the trial to a further 20 locations. Find out more about the pilot deployments.
Using the G.fast technology BT will be able to offer download speeds between 299Mbps and 330Mbps, and upload speeds between 42Mbps and 50Mbps. With those speeds I could probably have a 4K TV running in every room of my house simultaneously.
How is G.fast technology being supplied?
BT’s Fibre-optic cables run all the way to a cabinet in the street (fibre to the cabinet or FTTC). The cabinet is then connected to homes using regular copper wires. BT’s G.fast technology uses the existing roadside cabinets and existing copper wires connected to homes, providing download speeds of up to 330Mbps. Such speeds would have previously required fibre cable to be run all the way to the premises (FTTP). For G.fast it does seem that the premises must be located within a few hundred metres of the cabinet?
How does that compare to my current BT broadband package? My current package is fibre broadband, BT Infinity 2 which has an advertised download speed of up to 76Mbps. Performing speed tests on my wired home PC today, I got the following speeds:
For me, it’s about 38Mbps-41Mbps (today) on the current BT Infinity 2 service. This compares to an expected minimum speed of 290Mbps on the G.fast service.
BT seem to be offering customers a speed guarantee:
The new upload speeds of 42Mbps -50Mbps will be faster than my current typical download speeds of around 41Mbps!
The trial has a duration of 12 months and should begin on Wednesday 13th September 2017 with a visit by a BT broadband engineer. BT have just delivered a new Broadband hub.
Ellis Karim's Blog 
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