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BT retail boosts broadband to 160mb

BT Retail has boosted its fastest broadband, BT Infinity 160Mb, from 100Mb to 160Mb, as it outpaces offerings from other major ISPs. BT Infinity 160Mb’s upload speed has also been accelerated from 15Mb to 20Mb.

BT’s offering is based on fibre that goes all the way to individual homes in order to deliver the highest consumer download speed and is available in 25 exchanges across the UK.

BT Retail is continuing to offer BT Infinity 160Mb with unlimited evening and weekend calls for just £35 a month, now with even faster speeds.

Pete Oliver, commercial director of BT’s Consumer division, said: “We have set the standard again by boosting our top speed available to customers. We are seeing strong interest in our fibre broadband offerings and we now have more than 700,000 customers.

“160Mb now beats anything offered by our major rivals for speed and today’s substantial speed boost comes at no extra charge, as the price remains the same. Our trials have shown that customers absolutely love our fastest broadband ever.”

BT Infinity 160Mb is currently available from a limited number of exchanges. Customers in Highams Park, Bradwell Abbey, Leytonstone, Ilford, Ashford, Forest Hill, Chester, York, St. Austell, Truro and Exeter will be among the first to have the opportunity to purchase it. Customers in these exchange areas will enjoy the full range of Infinity options, as they will also have the choice of BT’s up to 38Mb and up to 76Mb BT Infinity packages.

BT has been rolling out fibre 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 11 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 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 roll-out would be uneconomic.