BT CEO Gavin Patterson today set out the company’s ambition to transform the UK broadband landscape from superfast to ultrafast within the next decade. He revealed that BT plans to deliver much faster broadband for homes and small businesses via a widespread deployment of "G.fast". This is an technology that BT will test in two pilot locations starting this Summer.

G.fast will help BT deliver ultrafast speeds of up to 500Mbps to most of the UK within a decade. Deployment will start in 2016/17, subject to the pilots being successful.

Early tests show G.fast is capable of delivering a range of speeds depending on how close the technology is to a customer’s premises. BT expects to offer initial speeds of a few hundred megabits per second to millions of homes and businesses by 2020. Speeds will then increase to around 500Mbps as further industry standards are secured and new kit is developed.

The two pilots will start this Summer in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire and Gosforth, Newcastle. Around 4,000 homes and businesses will be able to participate in the pilots which will explore what speeds can be delivered using G.fast at scale.

BT is likely to deploy G.fast from various points in the network, with the pilots allowing it to assess various roll out options. It is also planning to develop a premium fibre broadband service for those residential and business customers who want even faster broadband, of up to 1Gbps.

The UK is already ahead of Germany, France, Italy and Spain when it comes to superfast broadband coverage and take, and BT plans to joins the ranks of world leaders such as Japan and South Korea.