Britons get next generation broadband
THE UK IS finally getting next generation broadband as British Telecom installs fibre-based connections for a trial in London and Wales.
Exchanges in Muswell Hill and Whitchurch in South Glamorgan are to become pilot sites where the broadband will be tested.
BT said that once the exchanges are upgraded home users should be able to go online at 40Mbps.
More than 15,000 home and business customers in each area will get the chance to take part in the pilot.
The network is based on fibre-optic cables which will be run to street cabinets that connect homes and businesses to telephone exchanges.
A BT spokesman said the two regions were chosen because they had a mix of different customer types. The pilots will begin in summer 2009.
In July 2008, BT announced it was shelling out £1.5 billion installing fibre-optic cables to that would bring the high-speed broadband to about 40 per cent of the UK population. µ
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
Virgin Media have been advertising fiber optic broadband for ages...
About bloody time BT got it's finger out and brought us in line with everyone else. Why has it taken them so long?? The UK is years behind with it's broadband, with some people either unable to get it and others with really low speeds. I can still only get up to 512kbps!!
Haha, typical BT, the rest of the world gets 100Mb when they get fiber and BT makes it 40, bloody bit-pinchers.
Wouldnt even shell a penny for any of this stuff even for the packages they charge there poor (go look see). Mine can't make up it's mind 1 day it's 340-400kbps then the next it's 200-280kbps and I've replaces all my cables with high speed modem and decent CAT5.
That'll be Whitchurch *in* South Glamorgan, numbnuts.
This BT trial is not even being starting until summer 2009 and it will be end-2009 early 2010 before they decide if its worth rolling-out fibre across the UK and even then only 40mb/s.
@ Ryan,

Yes Virgin have been sending me leaflets advertising their fibre optic broadband too. At a pathetic 10 meg.

I can get faster than that from bethere.co.uk on a standard copper wire.

BT's fibre offering is far better than what Virgin are promoting at the moment.
What is this? a bad joke?

40mbps?? I'm already on 24. How exactly does fiber take me from 24 to 40?

Why is this country so backwards?

When they finally get fiber at 40 laughable mbps will we be able to get upload of more than 2.5??

This is some sort of bad joke. Whoever is in charge of slowing the bandwidth down should be whipped to death with slim fiber optic cable.
Years on we're still feeling BT's monopoly. 
It was painful when broadband first rolled out because of the archaic infrastructure. Their dsl is unreliable, and you have to pay for a phone line.

Diamond Cable/NTL/Virgin Media's shoddy support line aside, their internet services kick ass. Back in the day you could get 56k for free after 6pm as it was a ntl number (yes that rose to 1p/min). Then broadband came in. 

Over time they have jacked the speed up, I've ditched my landline in favour of skype, and now enjoy a reliable 10mbit. Sure the speed gets throttled from time to time (damn hi def porn :P), but there's no cap or extra charge, and it's full speed the next day.

That's how it should be...And I cant help feeling BT will still get this wrong.
Singapore .. 1Gb fibre to the home network announced. 95% coverage by 2012.

http://home.singtel.com/news_centre/news_releases/2008_09_26.asp
That will be Whitchurch in 'Cardiff' then - South Glamorgan hasn't existed for about 10 years or more.
It's probably just FTTC (curb - thank you Americanisms). So the total run length to the household is shorter, and the backhaul is more capacious. Kinda like AT&T's U-Verse?
@El Lizardo
Virgin have offered a decent 20MB services for a long time. Costs begin around £29 per month and drop when you take a phone line.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/geogdata/ngw/map.htm says Glamorgan exists.
Seriously, why is everyone so upset about *only* a 40 Mb/s cap? I live in rural Texas, and though I have access to what I consider a fantastic 1.5 Mb/s DSL connection because I live "in town", the majority of people I know can only get 56 kb/s dialup. I'm just putting this announcement in perspective-- for me, having fiber run to my street would be amazing, regardless of speed.