BT to start selling 330Mbps infinity from June 11/2012????
 

Ok I am probably reading this wrong or its already covered here somewhere either way I'm sure someone here will be able to explain if this is happening...


BTOpenreach, which manages access to BT’s national UK telecoms and internet access infrastructure, has begun inviting ISPs (i.e. those that are members of the NGA Industry Group) to take part in its first official trial of “premium” ultrafast 330Mbps (Megabits per second) capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband speeds (likely to be advertised as a clean “300Mbps“).

BT’s 330Mbps FTTP Trial Timetable (Tentative Dates)
* 23rd April 2012: Trial/pilot invitation
* 21st May 2012: ISP collaborative pilot
* 9th June 2012: ISP pilot completes
* 11th June 2012: Openreach launch 330Mbps product


Link to story. CLICK

Re: BT to start selling 330Mbps infinity from June 11/2012????
 

Looks like the timetable has slipped by about a month but it's been public for quite some time (mid last year). They will be launching 330mbps service "this spring" and 1Gbps service next spring.

Re: BT to start selling 330Mbps infinity from June 11/2012????
 

Come on FTTP-on demand! I'll quite happily pay £500-£750 to get that kind of bandwidth installed!

Re: BT to start selling 330Mbps infinity from June 11/2012????
 

It's going to be really expensive.

The 100Mb down, 30Mb up FTTP product is £43.63/month just for the connection from the premises to the exchange, ignoring the costs of getting from exchange to Internet and other provider costs.

Re: BT to start selling 330Mbps infinity from June 11/2012????
 

tbf, most residential customers wouldn't..

Re: BT to start selling 330Mbps infinity from June 11/2012????
 

The thing that bothers me with this is the fact that if I pay £1000 to have fibre pulled from the cabinet to my house, then, from what ive heard, my neighbor will be able to use the same cable, and pay, say, £50 to have his 'tapped' into the same one

Re: BT to start selling 330Mbps infinity from June 11/2012????
 

The 100 down 15 up product must be a lot cheaper then, since it's selling at £35/month inc. VAT at retail. Either that or BT are making a huge loss on it.

Given the 330 down is due to come with 20 or 30mbps up, I'd expect pricing more in line with 100/15 than 100/30.

Re: BT to start selling 330Mbps infinity from June 11/2012????
 

Openreach pricing.

330Mbps is by all accounts I've heard not really intended as a consumer product so people thinking that they'll be seeing BT Infinity 330Mbps is probably somewhat premature.

Unsure why pricing on 330Mb/30Mb would be less than pricing on 100Mb/30Mb or more in line with 110Mb/15Mb. I guess BT may change their plans however Openreach are going to be hugely reluctant to release 330Mb/30Mb too cheaply as it will have extremely bad effects on their leased line revenue.

---------- Post added at 11:14 ---------- Previous post was at 11:13 ----------

Every home would need its own fibre back to the cabinet / splitter.

Re: BT to start selling 330Mbps infinity from June 11/2012????
 

Indeed, while 100/30 costs £43.63 p/m for the Openreach leg, 110/15 costs just £15.78 for the same. Given 330 will be offered with both 20 and 30mbps upstream options I'd expect them to be differentiated in the same way as 110/15 and 100/30 are now - one for consumer and one for business.

Re: BT to start selling 330Mbps infinity from June 11/2012????
 

Asked 2 ISPs and neither has any information on indicative pricing from Openreach yet but the retail price will not be nice - a single customer able to consume 1/3rd of an average exchange backhaul and 1/3rd of a 21CN handover means pricing both at wholesale and retail level will have to consider this.

Re: BT to start selling 330Mbps infinity from June 11/2012????
 

Surely I need not remind you of a certain competitor who were happy selling a 100mbps product on a 200mbps backhaul at £35 a month? :=]

Barring the fact that FTTP exchanges are hardly your average, a few 330mbps customers on a 64-way split GPON can't possibly turn out worse than a dozen 100mbps customers on a 4-channel DOCSIS 3 bond split 250-ways...

That considered, if I'm right and the lower upload option is differentiated as a "consumer" service like it is on 100 now, I'd expect a much lower prioritisation rate and more contention on it too. Still. Pricing should be out in a month or so.

Re: BT to start selling 330Mbps infinity from June 11/2012????
 

Openreach pricing isn't cross-subsidised nor based on usage, they can't traffic shape, they can't use telephony revenue to reduce pricing on FTTP. VM's 100Mb ego product was notably underfunded, hence the big uptick in congestion issues, and heavily subsidised by lower tiers. The average usage on 100Mb was huge compared with the average across the customer base.

The crunch point on the FTTP network isn't going to be the passive optical network nor the GPON card, it's going to be the backhaul at the exchange, be it BT Wholesale or an LLU operator, then in the case of BT Wholesale at the handover to the ISP. Backhaul at the exchange is down to the wholesale/retail operator depending if they are selling Openreach directly, and the handover between the wholesale operator and the retail operator where present will be down to the retail operator.

21CN is priced on burst rates, a 330Mb FTTP customer can make a hell of a dent in a 1Gb BTW backhaul and push it over the committed rate quite rapidly.

The 330Mb service is being written about as 'Premium' FTTP. We'll see if it has the price tag to match from Openreach. It will, sadly, need a relatively premium price tag, or to be shaped to hell, at the retail level.

As a case in point Sky's 80/20 product with no limits and using LLU is 30GBP / month if taken with line rental and calls, 50% more than the 40/2 product. You're probably talking 50+GBP/month for 330Mb delivered over LLU let alone a BT Wholesale product.

On the flip side though this may actually start to restore some sanity to broadband pricing. Unmanaged, shaped, throttled services, which VM isn't, are very expensive.

Re: BT to start selling 330Mbps infinity from June 11/2012????
 

While they certainly aint cheap, I wouldn't call £50 a month too bad either - I'd be paying £53 a month for my BT Business service already (plus line rental) if they hadn't cocked up my order. I actually see that as quite reasonable, though most consumers might still be gravitating towards £7.50 a month cheapo ADSL offers...

For Talktalk and BT Business, it's just £5 extra going 40/10 to 80/20, Sky's position is different as the £10 includes going from 2mbps to 20mbps upstream, skipping 40/10 which they don't provide. Given other providers charge £5 going from 40/2 to 40/10 Sky's charge seems to fall pretty much in line with the rest - i.e. £5 for the doubling of downstream bandwidth.

As for exchange backhaul, I'd be quite surprised if an FTTP exchange is only running 1Gbps backhauls, or that 1Gbps handovers will remain the norm for much longer - given BT's fairly concrete plans for 1Gbps service next year. Particularly as you say a single FTTC cab is backhauled to the exchange with multiple gigabit links, and an FTTP exchange will be running multiple GPON circuits. While an average ADSL2+ exchange might be running on just 1Gbps backhaul anything less than 10G on an FTTC/FTTP exchange like mine would make me wonder how the hell they're pulling off their insanely low congestion and jitter results right now.

Also the prioritisation rate on 110/15 (the consumer service) is just 20mbps in the downstream direction, or only slightly more than 40/10 and considerably lower than 80/20. That suggests they're going for much higher contention on the consumer FTTP products.

So again, given they're specifically introducing two variants, I fully expect the split to reflect the current 110/15 vs 100/30 differentiation, with 330/20 used for cheaper, shaped and lower prioritised services and priced within consumer reaches, probably around £40 to 50, with lower guaranteed speeds and higher contention both from Openreach and the ISP, and 330/30 being used for prioritised business services where £50 a month for 40/10 isn't even above the norm.

Re: BT to start selling 330Mbps infinity from June 11/2012????
 

What Openreach deliver and what BT Wholesale take from them are quite different things. BT Wholesale traffic groom to preserve jitter, you'd be surprised how many customers can be packed into a single GigE especially remembering that the vast majority of BT Wholesale customers traffic shape or cap.

Re: BT to start selling 330Mbps infinity from June 11/2012????
 

Prices as of 11th June 2012 (per month, ex VAT)
Up to 330 Mbps / 20 Mbps £24.61 (Offer price £15.61)
Up to 330 Mbps / 30 Mbps £51.61

(vs £43.63 p/m for 110/30 and £15.78 for 110/15)

17p cheaper than the existing 110/15 service subject to offer conditions. Hmmm