Superfast broadband is the common name used for fibre optic broadband. The technology uses a fibre optic cable between the exchange and your nearest street cabinet which enables much higher upload and download speeds, this is known as FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet). The line from the cabinet to your home is still copper, copper performs just as well as fibre over short distances so you don’t suffer any decline in performance.
Yeovil’s exchange rollout date is listed as 31 December 2012 but the exchange has been accepting orders for a while now.
But what does this mean for you?
Depending on where you live in Yeovil it might mean nothing at all. Use the availability checker here www.bt.com/infinity to see if you can get superfast broadband. Not every house will be able to get it, some of the reasons are listed below:
- Your phone line might be connected directly to the exchange and not the street cabinet
- You might be too far from the street cabinet to get a stable service
- The street cabinet might not be suitable for fibre optic cables
- Council planning permission might not be in place to do the necessary work to the cabinet yet.
If you can, then your package choices are ‘up to’ 40Mbps or ‘up to’ 80Mbps. These speeds are theoretical maximum speeds and are not guaranteed as there will be factors that prevent these speeds being attained, e.g. distance from street cabinet. Your minimum acceptable speeds should be 15Mbps or 30Mbps.
If you connect wirelessly you may be limited to a maximum of 54Mbps if you are using wireless ‘G’ technology. Upgrade to wireless ‘N’ to take better advantage of the internet speeds available.
In areas where FTTP (Fibre To The Premises) is available, speeds ‘up to’ 160Mbps are available and to take full advantage of this you will need to be connected via a Gigabit Ethernet port. If connecting via a cable is not convenient then it is especially important that you use equipment that supports the wireless ‘N’ standard.