Broadband blog – November 2018

Coverage update

Late September saw a major milestone for us in the roll out of ultrafast broadband services on GFast. Almost a year to the day of its launch we exceeded the 1 million premises passed mark. GFast builds on Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) to deliver speeds of up to 330 Mbps by supercharging the speed through the copper telephone wires from the cabinet to your property.

Coverage of Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) continues to grow following the launch of new speeds earlier this year. We added 30,000 premises in November and FTTP is now available to around 730,000 premises.

Industry news

Openreach is withdrawing WLR3 and this fundamentally affects almost all our broadband customers. You need to start planning now for the withdrawal of WLR3 as Openreach will stop selling it in 2023 and will withdraw the product completely in 2025. 

We have over 10 years' experience in IP solutions and we are evolving our portfolio to address this change with new products including WBC Single Order Fibre and Fibre to the Premises. For more information please contact Andy Wright at andy.s.wright@bt.com.

Other news

New ordering system for broadband orders 

Over the next 12-18 months we will be developing a new eCo Plus system for ordering Broadband. We are moving to a quicker, more efficient system which will provide a simplified and more intuitive user experience.

The move will be in stages as each of the order journeys and transactions are migrated, with the FTTC orders being available first from the end of this year. We will keep you updated nearer the time about what is launching and when, and how to get access. If you would like to be involved in some early trials with us, then please let us know as soon as possible. The number of participants will be limited and will be on a first come first served basis.

Sentinel

We have launched a new online dashboard for our fully managed, end to end Broadband Complete platform called Sentinel; a web-based monitoring tool which allows you to proactively troubleshoot and manage performance across the network so you can stay connected.

By using interactive maps, updated in real time, Sentinel allows you to select individual connections and exchanges to easily identify line problems in real time, while pre-configurable alerts via SMS or email will make sure you’re the first to know about any line issues or outages before they cause problems. Fast and reliable monitoring performance, hosted on its own dedicated server and backed up by a 99.99% uptime SLA, is supported by dedicated account management and completely unscripted customer and technical support. 

Introduction of new speeds for FTTC and GFast

In November, we introduced two new FTTC GFast speed variants onto our Broadband Complete platform. The new speeds are 160Mbps downstream, 30Mbps upstream (160/30) & 330Mbps downstream, 50Mbps upstream (330/50).

The updated price list and handbook are available via the Broadband Complete page on btwholesale.com.

Did you know?

The Broadband Availability Checker (BBAC) is a search tool that can be used to provide assistance with customer enquiries about products and services. The BBAC gives an indication of where our broadband services are available for a given phone number, postal address, Network Address key (NAD key) or postcode.