According to a report in today’s Daily Telegraph, Openreach – now a separately managed subsidiary of BT, though still wholly owned by the UK incumbent – will offer packages using G.fast technology on existing copper lines or full fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) where possible.
Sky wants to sell fast services to at least 84% of its estimated 2.5 million broadband customers by 2023. Sky has a total of 6.2 million customers overall. G.fast technology will permit speeds of up to 330Mbps per household.
In the longer term Sky wants to resell Openreach’s full FTTH services, permitting up to 1Gbps, to three million homes and businesses by 2020 and 10 million by the mid 2020s, says the report.
Openreach has not responded to Capacity’s request for a comment. However, following a direction from the UK regulator, Ofcom, Openreach is now a separately managed subsidiary company with its own board and accounts. Speculation has mounted that a new BT CEO – expected to be named within days – will start a full demerger of Openreach from BT.
