BT Raises Standard Fibre Package Speeds To 52Mbps

BT has increased the speed of its standard fibre service from 38Mbps to 52Mbps, providing a boost for consumers and home office workers.

The company claims its standard service is now faster than Sky and TalkTalk’s equivalents, which offer services on the Openreach network, and that of Virgin Media, which has a basic cable connection is 50Mbps.

“Our research has shown that it’s what you can actually do with your broadband that matters most to consumers,” said BT’s David McDonald. “The new, faster BT Infinity 1 service is about giving consumers a premium broadband experience as standard, allowing them to enjoy all the digital world has to offer.”

BT speed increase

The move should see the average speed of a UK broadband connection increase further still, having been raised in recent years by the wider availability of fibre and speed upgrades on Virgin Media’s network.

The current average speed is 28.9Mbps, an increase of 27 percent during 2015, while the average superfast broadband connection is 56.8Mbps.

However there is a significant difference between urban and rural areas. The average download speed in urban areas is 50.5Mbps, while the rural average is 13.7Mbps. Ofcom says this can be explained by the lower availability of fibre and cable, as well as slower average ADSL and fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) speeds.

The vast majority of superfast broadband customers receive services over cable or FTTC, the latter of which uses copper for the final few hundred metres. BT has committed to rolling G.Fast, which speeds up copper, to 10 million homes by the end of the decade and the majority of the UK within a decade.

Virgin Media is also working on cable speed upgrades and a number of other providers offer fibre to the premise (FTTP).

BT is the biggest provider of superfast broadband on the Openreach fibre network, which now reaches 25 million properties.

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