BT says fibre to the home trials were successful

UK TELECOM BT has announced that its fibre to the premises (FTTP) trials in Cornwall have been successful and it plans to make the service available next year.

BT's existing fibre-optic offering consists of fibre to the cabinet (FTTC), branded as BT Infinity, however over 2011 the firm ran trials of the more costly but more useful FTTP service in Cornwall. Now BT claims those trials were a success and it will make the service available to its resellers in Spring 2013.

The firm said that FTTP users can expect speeds of up to 300Mbit/s, though resellers are likely to target businesses rather than residential users. There was no word on pricing or the all important usage limits, but it would be fanciful to think that BT's resellers will offer a truly unlimited 300Mbit/s internet connection.

BT's decision to plough ahead with FTTP is something of a U-turn, as the firm had decided to go down the cheaper FTTC route a few years back. While FTTC is better than traditional copper twisted pair, it is still widely seen as a stop-gap between that and going the whole hog to FTTP, which - although it carries a significantly higher price tag for deployment - reaps rewards in delivering very high bandwidth connections.

BT also reiterated its intention to double the speed of its BT Infinity service after Spring 2012, though deployment is still very patchy, even within most major UK cities such as London. µ