BT announces its plans to deliver Gigabit broadband across the UK
Gigabit broadband should reach half of UK homes by 2025
Published: 11th March 2020 | Source: BT |
BT announces its plans to deliver Gigabit broadband across the UK
BT plans to become the UK's fastest broadband provider, confirming its plans to launch Gigabit broadband services later this month. Initially, this service will be limited to selected cities, towns and villages, though the broadband provider aims to bring this service to half of UK households by the end of 2025.
Later this month, gigabit services will become available in Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Leeds, London and Manchester. These services will offer broadband speeds that are up to 25x faster than "Superfast fibre", which is defined as an average of 67Mbps.
At this time, BT's pricing for its gigabit broadband services is unknown, though these will be revealed later this month. These services will reach more than 2 million households initially, making BT the largest full-fibre network provider at launch. This announcement follows Virgin Media's Gig1 Fibre launch, which already delivers Gb availability to 1 million UK homes.
Those who are interested in BT's Gigabit internet services can register at www.bt.com/full-fibre-interest to learn more about the service when it becomes available.
Virgin Media provides its Gigabit services for £62 per month at the time of writing, and BT is expected to offer customers competitive pricing.
Later this month, gigabit services will become available in Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Leeds, London and Manchester. These services will offer broadband speeds that are up to 25x faster than "Superfast fibre", which is defined as an average of 67Mbps.
At this time, BT's pricing for its gigabit broadband services is unknown, though these will be revealed later this month. These services will reach more than 2 million households initially, making BT the largest full-fibre network provider at launch. This announcement follows Virgin Media's Gig1 Fibre launch, which already delivers Gb availability to 1 million UK homes.
Those who are interested in BT's Gigabit internet services can register at www.bt.com/full-fibre-interest to learn more about the service when it becomes available.
Virgin Media provides its Gigabit services for £62 per month at the time of writing, and BT is expected to offer customers competitive pricing.
You can join the discussion on BT's plans to deliver Gigabit broadband across the UK on the OC3D Forums.
Most Recent Comments
Friend of mine on the European mainland pays £20 a month for Gigabit internet, The prices in the UK are disgusting.Quote
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Originally Posted by Dicehunter
Friend of mine on the European mainland pays £20 a month for Gigabit internet, The prices in the UK are disgusting.
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Originally Posted by NeverBackDown
US is worse... 95% of us don't have any other company we can use either. They charge what they want
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The USA is enormous, and getting broadband everywhere costs a fortune. Remember, our entire country is smaller than most of your lower 48 dude.
You also have to agree to an 18/24 month contract here as well, where as in the USA I could get broadband any time I wanted to buy a modem and just call up Comcast/Roadrunner etc and have it connected that day. Then have it disconnected whenever I felt like it.
UK is greedy dude. Real greedy, given we are so tiny.Quote
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Originally Posted by AlienALX
Nothing like it.
The USA is enormous, and getting broadband everywhere costs a fortune. Remember, our entire country is smaller than most of your lower 48 dude. |
The issue in both countries essentially comes down to the fact that you're having private companies operating without any real competition, whether that's because they're the only operator in a given area as in some of the worst affected areas of the US, or because they're all fundamentally competing on the same underlying infrastructure, so they have minimal real opportunity to innovate or differentiate their profit and mostly rely on competing by using backhand tricks to raise their profit then just buy up their competitors, similar to the concentration of media ownership in general.
A lot of countries manage to band aid the problems with this franchising model with state enforced broadband universal services, but these in the UK and US these are so weak that they're basically non existent.
Important to remember who funded the development of fibre optic tech from the get go, the UK & US govt's (And therefore tax payers), and how we got to a state where media companies are selling state tech back to us at insane prices, with an example of the UK's path; believing that privatisation could drive deliver benefits without actual competition or risk, to such an extreme Thatcher was willing to sell off the most innovative tech of the time.
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Originally Posted by Dr Cochrane, BT's Chief Technology Officer before privatisation
"In 1986, I managed to get fibre to the home cheaper than copper and we started a programme where we built factories for manufacturing the system. By 1990, we had two factories, one in Ipswich and one in Birmingham, where were manufacturing components for systems to roll out to the local loop".
At that time, the UK, Japan and the United States were leading the way in fibre optic technology and roll-out. Indeed, the first wide area fibre optic network was set up in Hastings, UK. But, in 1990, then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, decided that BT's rapid and extensive rollout of fibre optic broadband was anti-competitive and held a monopoly on a technology and service that no other telecom company could do. "Unfortunately, the Thatcher government decided that it wanted the American cable companies providing the same service to increase competition. So the decision was made to close down the local loop roll out and in 1991 that roll out was stopped. The two factories that BT had built to build fibre related components were sold to Fujitsu and HP, the assets were stripped and the expertise was shipped out to South East Asia. "Our colleagues in Korea and Japan, who were working with quite closely at the time, stood back and looked at what happened to us in amazement. What was pivotal was that they carried on with their respective fibre rollouts. And, well, the rest is history as they say. |
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Originally Posted by AlienALX
Nothing like it.
The USA is enormous, and getting broadband everywhere costs a fortune. Remember, our entire country is smaller than most of your lower 48 dude. You also have to agree to an 18/24 month contract here as well, where as in the USA I could get broadband any time I wanted to buy a modem and just call up Comcast/Roadrunner etc and have it connected that day. Then have it disconnected whenever I felt like it. UK is greedy dude. Real greedy, given we are so tiny. |
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