Broadband News

BT promises 24Mb broadband as standard by 2011

Thursday, 24 September 2009 By Seamour Rathore seamour@consumerchoices.co.uk

BT will be able to provide up to 24Mb broadband to 20 million UK homes and businesses by Spring 2011.

BT (www.BT.com) is doubling the coverage of its next-generation copper broadband and lowering the cost by up to 50%, for communications providers.

The move means up to 24Mb broadband will be available to 20 million homes and businesses by spring 2011. It is currently only available to around 40% of homes and businesses in the UK, but this development should increase that figure to 75% of UK homes.

Customers will be able to get superfast service from BT, and many other internet service providers,. They buy BT’s services on wholesale basis and sell the services on to their own customers.

This development is part of BT’s 21st century network project which uses a new technology called ADSL2+.

At the start of 2010, BT Broadband (www.BT.com) launched its own superfast broadband in the form of its fibre optic BT Infinity (www.BT.com/Infinity) packages.

Starting at just £19.99 a month for an up to 40Mb broadband package with a 20GB monthly allowance, or £24.99 a month for its Option 2 package with “unlimited broadband”, subject to a fair usage policy, with massive 10Mb upload speeds.

It was only available to around 500,000 customers at launch, with plans to increase coverage to a further 2.5 million homes by summer 2010 and four million customers by the end of the year.

Cameron Rejali, managing director of products at BT Wholesale, said of the copper-based next-generation roll-out: “By expanding the footprint and reducing wholesale prices, we are helping communications providers deliver faster speeds to more customers.

“We plan to reduce prices to communications providers from January 2010 with bandwidth charges being dropped by almost 50%, and rental costs standardised at the lowest current price, too.”

Michael Phillips, product director at Broadbandchoices.co.uk, said: “This is good news for consumers who want to get more out of their broadband connection and are often disappointed by slow speeds.

“At the moment the most common fixed broadband speed in UK homes is “up to 8Mb”. This development means it won’t be long until “up to 24Mb” speeds will be commonplace.”

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