BT Infinity is a broadband

Broadband Internet access

Broadband Internet access, often shortened to just "broadband", is a high data rate, low-latency connection to the Internet— typically contrasted with dial-up access using a 56 kbit/s modem or satellite Internet with inherently high latency....

 service in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 provided by BT Retail

BT Retail

BT Retail is the consumer sales arm of Britain's BT Group.BT Retail is responsible for selling PSTN, BT Total Broadband, BT Vision, etc to consumers and end business users...

, the consumer sales arm of the BT Group

BT Group

BT Group plc is a global telecommunications services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is one of the largest telecommunications services companies in the world and has operations in more than 170 countries. Through its BT Global Services division it is a major supplier of...

. The underlying network is fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC), which uses optical fiber

Optical fiber

An optical fiber is a flexible, transparent fiber made of a pure glass not much wider than a human hair. It functions as a waveguide, or "light pipe", to transmit light between the two ends of the fiber. The field of applied science and engineering concerned with the design and application of...

 for all except the final few hundred metres to the consumer, and delivers download speeds of 'up to 40 Mbit/s', achieving speeds between 30 and 40 Mbit/s in practice. The upload speed of 'up to 10 Mbit/s' is claimed to be the fastest in the UK. The fibre terminates in a new roadside cabinet containing a DSLAM

Digital subscriber line access multiplexer

A digital subscriber line access multiplexer is a network device, located in the telephone exchanges of the telecommunications operators. It connects multiple customer digital subscriber line interfaces to a high-speed digital communications channel using multiplexing techniques...

, from where the final connection to the house uses VDSL2 technology.

Deployment

Following technical trial involving 50 homes in Foxhall, Ipswich, in January 2009, and operational pilots at the Muswell Hill, Whitchurch and Glasgow Halfway telephone exchange

Telephone exchange

In the field of telecommunications, a telephone exchange or telephone switch is a system of electronic components that connects telephone calls...

s, the service was launched commercially on January 25, 2010. When it was announced, BT expected 4 million customers for the service by the end of the year. Infinity forms part of BT's £1.5bn plan to make superfast broadband available to 40% of the UK by the summer of 2012, using FTTC and FTTP services. Previously, the only major provider of domestic fiber optic broadband in the UK was Virgin Media

Virgin Media

Virgin Media Inc. is a company which provides fixed and mobile telephone, television and broadband internet services to businesses and consumers in the United Kingdom...

's hybrid fiber-coaxial service.

Wholesale competition

Ofcom

Ofcom

Ofcom is the government-approved regulatory authority for the broadcasting and telecommunications industries in the United Kingdom. Ofcom was initially established by the Office of Communications Act 2002. It received its full authority from the Communications Act 2003...

 announced in October 2010 that BT would be required to allow other network operators access to its fibre optic infrastructure, poles and ducts.

Demand

BT Retail ran a competition called "Race to Infinity" in the autumn of 2010 to assess demand for the Infinity product in 2495 mostly-rural communities. The winners would be the 5 areas served by a telephone exchange that received the most percentage votes out of its "total connections" by 31 December 2010.

BT announced on 3 January 2011 that 6, not the originally planned 5, areas would receive Infinity by early 2012. The six winning areas were: Whitchurch, Hampshire

Whitchurch, Hampshire

Whitchurch is a town in Hampshire, England. It is on the River Test, from Newbury, Berkshire, from Winchester, miles from Andover and miles from Basingstoke. Much of the town is a Conservation Area. Because of the amount of wildlife in and near the river, parts of the town are designated as...

 (104%); Caxton, Cambridgeshire

Caxton, Cambridgeshire

Caxton is a small rural village and civil parish in South Cambridgeshire, England. It is 9 miles west of the county town of Cambridge. In 2001, the population of Caxton parish was 480 people. Caxton is most famous for the Caxton Gibbet.-History:...

 (103%); Madingley

Madingley

Madingley is a village near Coton and Dry Drayton on the western outskirts of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.Known as Madingelei in the Domesday Book, the village's name means "Woodland clearing of the family or followers of a man called Mada"....

, Cambridgeshire (102%); Innerleithen

Innerleithen

Innerleithen is a small town in the committee area of Tweeddale, in the Scottish Borders.-Etymology:The name "Innerleithen" comes from the Scottish Gaelic meaning "confluence of the Leithen", because it is here that the river joins the Tweed. The prefix "Inner-/Inver-" is common in many Scottish...

, Scottish Borders (101%); Blewbury

Blewbury

Blewbury is a village and civil parish at the foot of the Berkshire Downs about south of Didcot. It was part of Berkshire until the 1974 boundary changes transferred it to Oxfordshire.-Prehistory:...

, Oxfordshire (99.8%); Baschurch, Shropshire (95%).

Voting surpassed 100% in several areas because new places had been built and residents without landlines connected to the area's exchange could vote - and were encouraged to do so by very active locally-run volunteer campaigns.

In addition to winning Infinity, each of the six winning areas are to receive £5,000 of computer equipment for a local community project. BT originally planned on awarding the prize to just 1 of the top 5 winners.

An area's exchange had to get a minimum of 1,000 votes in order to enter the competition; any area whose exchange reached 75% would be actively engaged with by BT for an upgrade. Two exchanges outside the top 6 winners achieved over 75%: Marton, Warwickshire

Marton, Warwickshire

Marton is a village and civil parish in Warwickshire, England. The village is part of the borough of Rugby and in the 2001 census had a population of 484....

; and Capel, Surrey.

On 2 February 2011, BT announced that all 10 exchanges would be upgraded.

Criticism

BT have received objections to the siting of various road-side boxes that are being installed, the objections are not a dismissal that the new technology needs to be installed, but instead are a proposal that better locations be found. The green boxes to be installed are similar to existing street side cabinets but are taller and wider than existing units, with some models being 1.6 metres (5.2 ft) tall.