Just a quick update on our fibre-optic broadband trial. After a few false starts, we managed to enable the Muswell Hill exchange in North London this week and connect our first fibre-optic customer.
That first customer was an existing TalkTalk subscriber and it took us about three hours to convert their current copper-based ADSL connection to fibre-based VDSL one. Obviously, it’s only been live for a few days but the lucky first customer has gone from an average download speed of 5.3Mbps to 32Mbps! Encouraged by this result, we went on to connect two more customers with another following later today.
It’s early days and we still have lots to do. We’ll add a small number of additional triallists in the next few weeks. Also, we’d like to smooth out the installation process and take a closer look at upload speeds. And of course we’ll ask triallists to tell us what they think of the service, how it’s changed their internet usage and whether it’s something they would pay for. Assuming that all that checks out, we’ll start Phase Two where we will scale up the trial to around 200 customers across Muswell Hill and also at two additional exchanges – Whitchurch in Cardiff and Halfway in Glasgow.
Obviously, our first fibre-optic customer is a great landmark for us here at TalkTalk. But personally, now I’ve seen those speeds of 30Mbps and more, I’m just looking forward to becoming a triallist myself … I get my fibre installed next Wednesday. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes. Meanwhile, we’re now signing up customers who are interested in joining Phase Two of the trial. See here:
http://broadband.talktalk.co.uk/fibre-optic-trial.
PS: Have a look at the graph below which shows how download speed increased for TalkTalk’s first fibre-optic broadband customer.
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