BT to offer 100 Mbit/s residential broadband

Openreach - BT's local access network business - has unveiled details of its plans to deploy fibre-optic cable instead of traditional copper to connect homes on a 1,000 acre new build project in Kent.

From the Digital TV Group website:

From August 2008, Openreach will offer a fibre based broadband product at Ebbsfleet Valley that can support data at speeds of up to 100Mbit/s—the fastest headline speed available to residential customers in the UK.

According to BT, this would allow multiple HDTV channels to be watched simultaneously, HDTV gaming, and near instant music downloads.

Read the full report at
http://www.dtg.org.uk/news/news.php?id=2889

While the use of fiber to the home is a great advance there are concerns about how the 100 Mbits/s is then distributed around the house. Data-Over-Mains technology is used by some suppliers but this causes significant Pollution to the High Frequency Radio Spectrum which is a precious natural resource.

Data over mains in Personal Computer World magazine
http://www.southgatearc.org/news/october2007/
data_over_mains.htm

Data-Over-Mains - HomePlug might use 2-50 MHz
http://www.southgatearc.org/news/october2007/
homeplug_may_use_2_50mhz.htm

IEEE 802.11n High Speed WiFi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.11n

IEEE 802.11n Next Generation WiFi
http://80211n.com/

60 GHz could be used for home video distribution
http://www.southgatearc.org/news/june2007/sibeam.htm

WirelessHD
http://www.wirelesshd.org/