Broadband News

BE Broadband launches 40Mb line bonding service

Wednesday, 13 January 2010

By Garnet Roach garnet@consumerchoices.co.uk

BE Broadband (www.Bethere.co.uk) has announced that it will be launching a new 40Mb broadband service, using two lines “bonded” together to boost speeds.

The new service will be available from February, and following trials during 2009, BE has said that it expects customers on a 20Mb broadband line to be able to double their download speeds to up to 40Mb, with up to 5Mb uploads.

However, the ISP added that because “it’s significantly more complicated to get line bonding running compared to a single connection”, line bonding will only be offered to existing Pro customers, with only a small number of orders to begin with.

It also warned interested customers that the service could be costly. Tom Williams, head of operations at BE, said: “Pricing is yet to be finalised, but it won’t be cheap. It’s taking quite a lot of overhead and resource to bring the product out which is reflected in the price. We think the connection fee will be around £85 and the discounted cost for existing members around £50-£55 per month.”

Line bonding works by combining two copper wire ADSL lines to essentially double your broadband speed. However, this does mean that anyone interested in the service also has to pay line rental on two lines from BT Broadband (www.BT.com), further adding to the cost.

Michael Phillips, Broadbandchoices.co.uk product director, said: MP: “BE’s line bonding service will be available to around 70% of BT lines, allowing users who are not connected to Virgin Media's (www.Virginmedia.com) 50Mb broadband network - or who don’t want to switch to cable - to boost their download speeds, albeit at a high monthly cost.”

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