Back in 2006, BT and the British telecom regulator Ofcom reached an agreement which forced the former telco monopoly to make its copper wiring available to independent ISPs, who could then serve individual homes across the United Kingdom. Under this setup, BT's last-mile business became "Openreach" and nearly 400 ISPs and phone companies have taken advantage of this setup.
On Monday, Openreach announced it's ready to upgrade its wholesale offerings with fiber to the premises that will reach as high as 330 megabits per second.
“The 330/20 Mbit/s product is also launched with a special offer to encourage [ISPs] to offer the product variant to their customers and test this high bandwidth in the home environment,” the company said in a statement. At first, the new tier will come at a discount. “The 330/20 Mbit/s special offer will apply to orders raised between 11 June 2012 and 31 January 2013 and represents savings of more than 50 per cent per line per calendar month (based on transition prices).”
Once this service gets widely rolled out, it could be one of the fastest and most widespread offerings in Europe.
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