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Even faster broadband
Broadband has revolutionised the way that we all live, work and play and the increasing number of bandwidth hungry applications demand more and more bandwidth.

Fortunately, technology is keeping pace with demand and BT have committed £2.5 billion to bring superfast fibre broadband to two-thirds of the homes in Britain by 2014.

To do this most of the traditional copper network is being replaced by fibre optic cables. The closer your work or home is to the Fibre network, the faster the speeds that you will be able to receive. To this end, BT have introduced Fibre to the Cabinet (FFTC) where fibre is delivered to a cabinet near your location, probably in your street, with only the last part of the connection over copper, or even better, soon to come is Fibre to the Premises (FTTC) where Fibre is connected directly to your premises for an even faster connection.

• Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC). A part-fibre, part-copper solution, capable of delivering download speeds of up to 40Mbit/s and upload speeds of up to 15Mbit/s right away with 80/20 Mbit/s available from Spring 2012. With FTTC, we overlay fibre on the copper infrastructure running from an exchange to cabinets in the street. Copper will still be the final link (ie from the cabinet to your home or business).
• Fibre to the Premises (FTTP). A pure fibre solution, capable of delivering download speeds of 100Mbit/s and upload speeds of 30Mbit/s. If that's not fast enough for you, there are 300Mbit/s download speeds in the pipeline for later in 2012 – and 1Gbit/s being tested right now. As the name implies, this variant uses fibre all the way from the exchange to individual premises, usually delivered using underground cables.

Fibre can carry massive amounts of information over much longer distances than copper - and much faster too. In speed terms, you're talking downloads of up to 100Mbit/s and uploads of up to 30Mbit/s right now - with up to 300Mbit/s downloads becoming available during 2012. And that's just the start. It won't be long until people are demanding even faster speeds and BT are already testing a 1Gbit/s fibre service.

How can I get superfast broadband?
To see if your individual property is ready for superfast fibre broadband, download a list of exchanges where the service is available and contact us on 02380 646 300.