BT Openreach to double fibre broadband speeds next month

BT Openreach has confirmed that the speed capabilities of its fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) broadband product for communications providers will be doubled this April.

Thanks to the new upgrade, to be introduced early next month, downstream headline speeds of up to 80 Mbps and upstream speeds of up to 20 Mbps will be made available for the first time.

The upload speeds in particular are competitive with the fastest that are widely available to UK consumers at present, with the services set to be available to all communications providers on an open wholesale access basis.

More than seven million homes and businesses currently access BT's fibre broadband network, with the company aiming to make it available to two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2014.

Mike Galvin, managing director for network investment at BT Openreach, said: "We said we would double fibre speeds by this spring ... This is a significant milestone both for Openreach's fibre network and for broadband speeds in the UK."

This comes after the firm announced that it will also be launching a Multicast for Generic Ethernet Access service for its fibre broadband networks next month.