BT unveils plans for four times faster broadband

15 Oct, 2005 at 8:06am ET Article published in Tech

BT (British Telecom) plans to quadruple speeds for broadband Internet, in a move that will enable service providers to launch services such as live broadcasts and video conferencing across UK homes.

The former telecoms monopoly said on Friday it would launch customer trials across the UK at the end of November for a broadband Internet service that will offer speeds of up to eight megabits per second, against two megabits available now.

Some Internet access providers offer 8 megabit and even higher speeds, but their services are restricted mainly to small clusters of users, primarily in big cities.

A BT spokesman said this was the first time an eight megabit broadband service would be rolled out across the country. Britain’s largest fixed-line telecoms and Internet provider, said the trials would lay the foundation for a commercial launch across the UK by spring 2006.

Submitted by: Trogan_1000

Source: Yahoo

Comments

15 Oct 2005 ~ 10:01am RWB Is it just me or does America seem to be getting left behind? It seems like nothing has changed in the past 5 years for us, I still have the same ol' DSL I had when I lived here several years ago for example.
15 Oct 2005 ~ 11:09am Omega65 You can always get Cable access.....
15 Oct 2005 ~ 3:09pm Qeldroma Any idea what the upload speeds are?

RWB wrote:

Is it just me or does America seem to be getting left behind? It seems like nothing has changed in the past 5 years for us, I still have the same ol' DSL I had when I lived here several years ago for example.

That might be just your neck of the woods, RWB. 4-5MBit are consumer market download speeds out here in a good chunk of the West. Still at 0.5MBit upload though.
15 Oct 2005 ~ 8:32pm Enverex

RWB wrote:

Is it just me or does America seem to be getting left behind? It seems like nothing has changed in the past 5 years for us, I still have the same ol' DSL I had when I lived here several years ago for example.

8Mb wont be available to anywhere other than places like the center of London. Lots of people are still unavailable to get 1Mb or 2Mb at all. Hell, some exchanges still aren't even enabled. Cable also isn't available in most places here.

Upload is 256Kb.
17 Oct 2005 ~ 2:41am bothered We have 3Mb here and I've heard a rumour it's going to be increased.
18 Oct 2005 ~ 8:30am rapture

8Mb wont be available to anywhere other than places like the center of London. Lots of people are still unavailable to get 1Mb or 2Mb at all. Hell, some exchanges still aren't even enabled. Cable also isn't available in most places here.

London is seeing 24mb ADSL2+ connections now, 8mb connections should be available anywhere with an upgraded exchange thats less than 2km in line length away. Also if BT plan to bring these kind of connections to the whole of the country to compete with the LLU providers then we might see them doing something to bring faster connections to lines further away from exchanges.
18 Oct 2005 ~ 8:53am Enverex There are lots of us that are further than 2KM away. I, for instance, am 5Km away (10k loop). And I am in an urban area.
18 Oct 2005 ~ 10:52am rapture That doesn’t mean that London is the only place in the country that you can get an 8mb ADSL connection. BT has done loads in recent years to improve ADSL availability. They might have been forced into it by Ofcom but that’s not the point. There are now more broadband users than narrowband users in the UK and a lot of that is due to BT's ADSL implementation.
18 Oct 2005 ~ 5:14pm airbornflght i have a 5mb cable line, dsl around here sucks big time, cable is the way to go for serious data bandwidth.