BT on Friday announced it has begun a trial of G.fast technology in Gosforth, one of the two towns it named as pilot locations earlier this year.
The U.K. incumbent said the trial in the north east of England, has begun, but did not specify whether any customers have been connected via G.fast yet. In total the trial will cover 2,000 homes and will run for six-to-nine months.
It is working with Alcatel-Lucent to roll out the technology.
"This is the largest trial of G.fast technology in the world today and extensive research by teams of experts at both BT and Alcatel-Lucent have prepared us well for this exploration into how the technology performs," said Mike Galvin, BT’s managing director for service, strategy and operations, in a statement.
The announcement comes after BT in August said it had started a similar trial in Huntingdon. That project will have the same scale and duration as the Gosforth trial.
Both trials will provide broadband speeds of up to 330 Mbps over copper networks to homes and businesses.
If the trials are successful, BT will carry out a broader G.fast rollout in 2016-17 as part of a plan to make 500 Mbps broadband available to most of the U.K. within a decade.
However, it has warned that it requires regulatory support in order to push ahead with that plan, and at present its current business structur e is under threat, with Ofcom’s ongoing strategic review examining the future of its Openreach access unit. BT is keen to retain Openreach within the BT group, claiming this will drive investment in U.K. infrastructure, while many of its rivals have taken the opposite stance and are pushing for full structural separation.
Last week Vodafone and Sky formally responded to Ofcom’s review, both calling for Openreach to be split from BT. The incumbent also published its own response to the regulator.
