Network access provider Openreach (BT) has just announced that they’re planning to launch their first symmetric 1Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP packages, albeit initially only in “certain locations” from April 2025. Some of the first premises to benefit will be those covered by their rural Project Gigabit contracts (here).
Openreach’s full fibre network has so far covered 15 million premises (there are around 32.5m across the UK), but they aim to reach 25 million by December 2026 and have also expressed an ambition to reach “up to” 30 million by 2030. But the fastest FTTP package currently available to consumers on this network gives a top download speed of 1.8Gbps and 120Mbps upload (220Mbps for businesses).
One of the reasons why Openreach hasn’t yet offered anything faster, including true symmetric speeds (i.e. the same download and upload rate), stems from their use of a Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) – this places limitations on how fast they can go before capacity becomes an issue.
For example, GPON supports a capacity on each trunk line of up to 2.5Gbps downstream and 1.24Gbps upstream, which needs to be shared between several premises. By comparison, many of their competitors are already busy deploying 10Gbps capable XGS-PON technology (the ‘X’ stands for 10, the ‘G’ for Gigabits’ and the ‘S’ for symmetric speed), which is a significantly faster, more cost-effective and power efficient technology.
However, at the end of 2023 the then boss of strategic supplier ADTRAN revealed (here) that Openreach were adopting a ComboPON approach, which would make it easier for them to upgrade without needing to change all of the existing optical modems (ONTs) inside homes that they’ve deployed via GPON (e.g. they’ll be able to use either GPON or XGS-PON based ONTs, whatever the situation requires). But there was no sign of faster packages, until today.
Matthew Sledge, Openreach Product Manager, said:
“Last year we successfully launched to Communication Providers (CPs) new download speeds of up to 1.8Gbps over our Full Fibre network and we’re keen to continue pushing the capabilities of the network so we can further diversify our portfolio and offer our CP customers, and their own end customers a broader choice of competitive fibre based products.
At the current time we are focusing the new product on a deployment in selected Project Gigabit Type C areas, where we can assess demand and usage.
With broadband data usage growing year on year, we’re also planning for the future, and have recently engaged our Communications Provider customers on the next phase of Full Fibre network architecture, e.g. XGS-PON. We are seeking their feedback on what end customers future speed requirements might look like.”
Openreach aren’t yet ready to offer any further details, except to confirm that any end customers signing up to the new 1Gbps symmetric service will be able to use their existing ONT. Otherwise, the related pricing and commercial terms for the new product(s) “will be confirmed in due course“.
We’re currently trying to confirm this, but we suspect that the first products will form part of a trial / pilot in the aforementioned Project Gigabit build areas. This is because it would be very unusual for an operator of Openreach’s size to skip right to a full commercial launch, especially one with only limited availability. Pilots like this can last anything from 3 months to a couple of years.
The Project Gigabit Type C (Cross-Regional) contracts – worth up to £800m – for that build could eventually see Openreach expanding out to reach an additional 312,000 premises in hard-to-reach UK rural areas, with the first premises under these due to gain access to gigabit-capable broadband in “early 2025“. This closely aligns to their April 2025 date for the symmetric speed service.
Once deployed, we may see faster speeds than 1Gbps symmetric (or even 1.8Gbps asymmetric) become available in the future, although not every part of their network is currently ready to support symmetric performance. But that’s before we consider that it may take ISPs and wholesale suppliers (e.g. BTWholesale, TalkTalk, Zen Internet etc.) time to adapt to such products and the higher capacity demands involved.
UPDATE 2:18pm
Openreach has informed ISPreview that they’ll be “going straight to launch in April” because, they say, there aren’t any commercial or technical reasons to start it with a trial/pilot. But they did suggest that they’d probably still be monitoring the first few orders to checks speeds up/down etc. In addition, this should still be taken within the context of its limited initial availability.