UK-based wholesale fibre broadband provider CityFibre has announced the launch of a new service, ‘True Gig’, which it says offers downlink speeds of 1.2Gbps and is designed to allow its ISP partners to advertise ‘full 1Gbps speed services’. According to CityFibre, the new offering is designed to overcome the challenges experienced by ISPs when advertising ‘gigabit speed’ services to consumers. British ISPs are prohibited from advertising a service as offering 1Gbps speeds, unless they can prove 50% of their customers actually get such downlink rates on average at peak times.
CityFibre claims that due to the bandwidth overhead required for ISPs to run and monitor a service, a typical 1Gbps wholesale service must be advertised to consumers at slower speeds, typically 900Mbps. By increasing the wholesale speed to 1.2Gbps, the fibre provider says it is enabling its ISP partners to promise a full 1Gbps service to their customers, provided that their own backhaul arrangements and in-premises equipment also supports this. Of further note, the new product is being made available at the same price as CityFibre’s existing 1Gbps wholesale product.