LONDON -- Openreach today announced it will make its new faster Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) product available to Communications Providers (CPs) from early April. This product will deliver downstream headline speeds of up to 80Mbps and upstream speeds of up to 20Mbps.

The downstream speeds are roughly double those on offer today whilst the upstream speeds will be the fastest that are widely available to consumers in the UK. It will be up to CPs to choose when and if they offer these enhanced speeds to end users, as the current up to 40Mbps service will continue to be available.

FTTC technology underpins the majority of BT’s £2.5bn commercial roll-out of super-fast fibre broadband in the UK. It currently delivers up to 40Mbps downstream and up to 10Mbps upstream. The rough doubling of these speeds marks a significant milestone in BT’s development of the technology, and is expected to deliver a significant boost to households and businesses within BT’s fibre footprint.

BT has now made fibre broadband available to more than seven million homes and businesses and is aiming to make it available to around two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2014. There is potential for this footprint to be extended even further with BDUK funding, other public funds and further private sector investment.

BT Group plc (NYSE: BT; London: BTA)