Plusnet updates on fibre plans

BT-owned 'value' (i.e. cheap) provider Plusnet have revealed more on their trials of faster broadband services running over the FTTC and FTTH deployments that BT's Openreach access division are rolling out (mainly FTTC) - the same network that BT's own 'Infinity' faster broadband service runs over.

Of course the advantage of having multiple brands is that different service propositions can be tested out, which is unsurprisingly something that the commercial bods at BT (Plusnet being part of BT's commercial division within their BT Retail business) have taken advantage of to see how different product offerings map out.

Plusnet launched their FTTC offering in April last year and have invited their initial trialists of the service to sign up to trials of the speed increases that Openreach are planning to roll out to their FTTC network later this year, which will deliver download speeds of 'up to' 80Mb and upload speeds of 'up to' 20Mb - although, like all other DSL technologies, the speed consumers actually receive will be affected by their line length.

Trials are underway of the faster speeds and Plusnet plans to launch them commercially from May 1 - although it's not clear whether they will upgrade their existing customers or offer them as a separate product like TalkTalk's will be. Interestingly they are offering an upstream boost to 'up to' 10Mb for their existing 'up to' 40Mb FTTC based customers (who currently get 'up to' 2Mb upstream speeds) for an incremental £10 per month - an offering that differs from what their parent brand has available.

Those on the trials are apparently currently seeing an average throughput speed of 68Mb, which they will clearly be hoping continue as it will enable them to advertise them heavily presumably - and interestingly Andrews & Arnold have experienced sync speeds on their trial of something even closer to the theoretical headline speeds of the technology within the Openreach trial.

Plusnet will be offering their FTTH offering (100Mb downstream, 15Mb upstream) in the few locations where Openreach have it available for £34.49 per month (excluding line rental) from February 1 (BT's similar offering costing £35 per month) - but have interestingly also suggested that there might be a delay to Openreach's FTTH speed increase plans in saying that the 'up to' 330Mb speeds in its limited network availability areas will happen "later this year" rather than the originally announced "Spring 2012".

The update from Product manager Dave Tomlinson can be found here on the Plusnet site.