BT Retail boosts its Infinity speeds for no extra cost
Wednesday 11 April 2012 11:29:17 by Andrew Ferguson

BT Retail looks set to try and retain its lions share of the Fibre to the Cabinet market, that is based around the Openreach GEA products. The retail arm of BT has announced that its Infinity products will be receiving speed boosts at no extra cost and will be available to those who sign up from April 12th.

The BT Infinity 2 product, which is their unlimited fibre service will advertise download speeds of up to 76 Mbps, and upstream speeds of 19 Mbps (based on the Openreach GEA FTTC 80/20 service) for the same price as the old service which is £26 per month (plus line rental which starts at £10.75).

BT Infinity 1 product which was previously limited to 1.9 Mbps upstream speeds, will retain the same download speeds, but benefit from a faster upload at up to 9 Mbps. This service costs £18 per month (plus line rental) and retains its 40GB monthly usage allowance.

"Super-fast broadband is helping people enjoy the internet far more than ever before. However, many providers have forgotten about the importance of fast upload speeds. BT believes that fast upstream speeds are vital given how people now use the internet and so we are distancing ourselves from the competition by providing the UK's fastest upload speed."

John Petter, managing director, BT Consumer

The comments seem to be a distinct side swipe at Virgin Media whose fastest product once its uplift programme has completed will offer a 120 Mbps download, but only a 12 Mbps upload. The 30 Mbps service that is that firms baseline service will offer a 3 Mbps upload. Also the fledgling Sky FTTC service that launches in a few days is only offering the 40/2 Openreach service with its basic 2 Mbps upload.

Details of the various fibre services from other providers are listed in our fibre guide, where the majority of providers are still to announce ASA compliant speed figures.