BT Openreach - Testing a service to extend FTTC to the home, but at costs of over £1,000 (wholesale)

ZDnet reports that BT Openreach is testing service described as "fibre on demand" that will provide speeds of 330 Mbps from Spring 2013.

The problem isn't the technology but the cost of the deployment, which involves laying a fibre optic cable from the local cabinet to the home or business premises. This is a variable cost, but could well be over £1,000.

Mike Galvin of BT Openreach was quoted as saying:

FTTP on Demand has great potential and so we are proceeding with these pilots. Whilst we believe FTTC will be our mass market consumer product for some time yet, FTTP may be of interest to small and medium sized businesses and so we want to make it accessible throughout our fibre footprint. This development can potentially help SMEs to compete both at home and abroad as well as maintain and create jobs across the UK.

Computing identifies the eight exchanges as including: parts of High Wycombe, Bristol South and St Agnes in Cornwall, the Waverley exchange in Edinburgh (from September 2012), then parts of Watford, Cardiff, Basingstoke and Manchester Central (from March 2013).