Image: © Klaus The./Stock.adobe.com
Consumers could be the winners as wholesale gets more competitive.
BT Ireland has revealed a new fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) capability, enabling operators to provide up to 1Gbps broadband to homes and businesses.
This is in addition to next-generation fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) and traditional ADSL2+ broadband. A spokesperson explained that BT has a reach of 1.9m next generation access (NGA) premises, including homes and businesses, passed by FTTH and FTTC.
‘We’ve been trialling fibre-to-the-premise technology as an addition to our wholesale broadband platform for over six months to make it fit for purpose’
– PETER EVANS
BT was one of the forerunners of local loop unbundling in the Irish market whereby it put its own equipment into exchanges owned and operated by the incumbent operator, Eir.
In July 2009, BT signed a landmark deal with Vodafone to transfer its consumer and small business broadband portfolio to Vodafone, instead focusing on serving the market as a wholesale operator, as well as serving large corporate and government customers.
A wholesale game-changer?
BT said that it has been investing in integrating its own network and IT systems with main providers, effectively competing with Open Eir in the wholesale market, to become a single-point supplier for operators.
It added that broadband providers can use BT to offer a fully managed white-label reseller service to their consumer and business customers, or manage their own backhaul and ISP core. Broadband services range in speeds, including up to 1Gbps with FTTH, the fastest fixed-line speeds currently available on the market.
“We’ve been trialling fibre-to-the-premise technology as an addition to our wholesale broadband platform for over six months to make it fit for purpose,” said Peter Evans, director of wholesale at BT.
“We have over 50 communications providers in our wholesale customer base, and can boost competition by enabling them to efficiently introduce high-speed broadband for their customers.
“With our service model, customers have one fixed point of contact in BT to manage their broadband service, as opposed to having to deal with numerous wholesale suppliers. This is unique to BT and greatly reduces the complexity of the process for our customers, and we looking forward to expanding our footprint further again upon completion of the National Broadband Plan.”
