BT has officially unveiled its first fibre optic offering, with BT Infinity super>fast boasting download speeds of up to 40Mbps from £19.99 per month.
In a release that talks about Virgin Media's rival superfast broadband as much as its own in the opening few sentences, BT points out that its fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) is available for £7.47 less a month than the Virgin's flagship service.
Of course there is no mention of the 50Mbps speed of its rival, neither does the release make a big point of the fact that the £19.99 BT Infinity package is only available if you fork out a £50 connection fee until a graph at the end - and it's capped.
The laudable 10Mbps upload speed is only available on a pricier £25 package, complete with free install - a package that nonetheless looks like the better value of the two.
Transforming consumer experience
"BT Infinity will transform consumer experience of the internet, benefiting all internet users," says BT's release.
"Households with multiple computers/internet devices will enjoy simultaneous use of services such as HD catch-up TV, social networking and the sharing of photos or films, amongst others."
BT Retail started to sell fibre services to other providers last week with its Next Generation access programme – part of a £1.5 billion investment in upgrading the UK's infrastructure.
The £19.99 package is available for those who pay a £50 connection charge and this option comes with just a 2Mbps upload speed. The £25 package has the aforementioned up to 10Mbps upload speeds.
Essential
Gavin Patterson, Chief Executive Officer, BT Retail, said: "The internet is essential to our customers' lives and they are demanding more and more as richer and even more compelling services become available.
"BT Infinity gives customers the capacity and reliability they need in an instant and at a great value price they can afford.
"We want to give our customers the best possible online experience and are committed to rolling out super-fast speeds across the UK."
From January 25, new and existing BT Total Broadband and BT Business customers in an enabled exchange areas will automatically be eligible for the up to 40 Mb/s broadband service.
That doesn't mean you'll be getting BT Infinity from January 25 - 'the service will be made available to 4 million homes and businesses by the end of December 2010' adds BT. So you'll have to be lucky to get it this month.
Your comments (6) Click to add a new comment
rootginger
January 22nd
6. @gre66 Fibre optic connections do not suffer from losses over distance like copper does so your distance from the exchange is irrelevant with these services. However it is only fibre to the cabinet in the street and then copper into your premises. It's the distance and quality of copper to the cabinet that will affect your bandwidth in these new fibre optic services.
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warrenpeace
January 21st
5. What's the point in this? Bt have a fair usage policy where if you exceed 100GB in a month they slow down your connection. Most other ISP's have similar policies. Until these policies are addressed and maybe scrapped there's no point in superfast broadband connections. With a 40mb connection I could easily use 100gb of data.
My BT connection is throttled in the evening because of heavy usage at the exchange. They claim they are trying to even out the connection between everyone in the area. What are they gonna do if everyone has a 40mb connection, how will the exchange cope?
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urban
January 21st
4. BT can't even deliver me ADSL2 until the end of 2011...and that will slip to 2012.
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nitrofan
January 21st
3. Oh this should be good,I have been arguing with BT over their inability to deliver 8Mb to my London address for three years! I can feel an enquiry letter coming on
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gre66
January 21st
2. I have been with Virgin for some time now and I have to say on the whole they are no better or worse than any other supplier. Their customer service isn't bad but not great either, like any company it depends on who you get. As for connection speeds I get well in excess of 50Mb on a regular basis,even the engineers can't explain why but I don't care it's great. What you have to be really aware of is BT says up to 40MB and you need to know how close to the exchange you are as this and many other factors can make a great deal of difference but the worse news is it's capped. Unlimited internet should be unlimited and quoted speeds should be as quoted min. The law needs to change to get that bit right.
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shambolic2000
January 21st
1. BT is rubbish. I was with them for ages until thankfully my contract ended and I went to O2. Now I pay only £9.76 a month for 20Mbps, which more than fast enough for a heavy downloader. A lot of reports say that Virgin's customer service is appalling, so I didn't go with them.
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