BT Retail has expanded its BT Infinity broadband family to include an ultrafast service offering download speeds of up to 100Mbps. This, say BT, matches Virgin Media’s fastest commercial service but offers upload speeds that are 50 per cent faster.
BT Infinity Option 3 is based on fibre that goes all the way to individual homes in order to deliver the company’s highest consumer download speed. It also allows users to upload material to the internet at up to15Mbps. BT claims to be the only major ISP to offer such a service.
BT Retail is offering BT Infinity Option 3 with unlimited evening and weekend calls for just £35.00 a month.
John Petter, managing director of BT’s Consumer division, said: “We are delighted to launch BT Infinity Option 3, which offers our fastest-ever speeds for consumers. We are seeing very encouraging takeup of our fibre-based broadband and we now have more than 300,000 customers.
“Today’s addition expands our product offering, so we now have three versions of BT Infinity offering high speeds that allow families to do more online at the same time. BT Infinity Option 3 matches the top speed currently available in the UK and beats the upload speed offered by Virgin Media’s best offering.”
BT Infinity Option 3 will be available from a limited number of exchanges initially, as Openreach rolls out fibre directly to homes and premises. Customers in Highams Park and Leytonstone in London, Ilford in London borough of Redbridge, Ashford in Middlesex, Forest Hill in the London borough of Lewisham, Chester, York, St. Austell and Exeter will be among the first to have the opportunity to purchase it. Customers in these exchanges will enjoy the full range of Infinity options, as they will also have the choice of BT’s up to 40Mbps BT Infinity packages.
BT has been rolling out up to 40Mbps superfast broadband across the UK, available from BT Retail as BT Infinity Option 1 and BT Infinity Option 2. This version of fibre broadband, where fibre runs from the exchange to the street cabinet, is now available to more than 6 million homes and premises and the footprint will continue to grow.
BT has said that around two-thirds of UK homes and premises will have access to fibre-based superfast broadband by the end of 2014 – a year earlier than the original target. BT is investing £2.5 billion on the commercial deployment of fibre optic broadband and is hoping to reach a much higher percentage of the country with the help of Government funds, where demographics mean a commercial rollout would be uneconomic.