Openreach has announced plans to launch a new symmetric 1Gbps broadband speed tier in certain locations, offering communications providers further choice when ordering a service over its full fibre network.
The business plans to make the new service available at premises which make up its successful "Type C" bid to build full fibre in partnership with government’s £5 billion Project Gigabit programme – aimed at upgrading the final 20 per cent of the UK to gigabit capable speeds. Openreach will look to launch the new symmetric service in April 2025.
A symmetrical service can speed up the upload of large files, such as videos, graphics and software. This reduces latency and ping times, boosting cloud-based applications and services, as uploading and accessing data are equally fast.
Openreach product manager Matthew Sledge, 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.”
Any end customers signing up to the new 1Gbps symmetric service will be able to use their existing optical network terminal’ - the box that allows fibre optic cable to be connected from inside a premises to the fibre network in the street.