Broadband Guide

Superfast broadband

Broadband speeds have come a long way in recent years, with packages offering speeds of up to 20Mb, 24Mb and even 50Mb all available today. But what is superfast broadband and what can you do with it?

Virgin Media (www.Virginmedia.com) currently delivers the fastest downloads in the UK, with headline speeds of up to 50Mb. Be Broadband (www.Bethere.co.uk), O2 Broadband (www.O2.co.uk), TalkTalk Broadband (www.Talktalk.co.uk) and others also offer fast packages.

Compare the UK's fastest broadband packages below, and click GO to visit your chosen provider. Most ISPs allow you to sign-up online, and can generally switch your broadband connection without interruption.

What is superfast broadband?

Using its fibre optic cable network, Virgin Media currently offers the UK’s fastest broadband package at speeds of up to 50Mb. And it also offers packages at 20Mb and 10Mb.

However, speeds such as 50Mb are currently only available via fibre optic cables from Virgin Media, which currently only covers 51% of the UK - apart from trial areas on new build sites like Ebbsfleet, Kent, where BT Broadband (www.BT.com) has built a fibre-to-the-home network to offer speeds of up to 100Mb.

But there is another option. Using ADSL2+ technology, ADSL providers such as Be, O2, Sky Broadband (www.Sky.com) and TalkTalk can offer speeds of up to 20Mb or even up to 24Mb.

In June 2009, BT announced that all of its BT Broadband customers connected to an upgraded exchange would be able to take advantage of a free speed increase to 20Mb if they agreed to recontract with the ISP.

BT Broadband (www.BT.com) recently 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.

And in October 2009, Plusnet Broadband (www.Plus.net), Orange Broadband (www.Orange.co.uk) and Zen Internet (www.Zen.co.uk) all made similar announcements.

All of today’s high speed broadband packages come with generous set download allowances or “unlimited broadband” downloads, subject to a fair usage policy - with the exception of Sky’s Unlimited 20Mb broadband package, which is the UK’s only truly unlimited package - allowing you to really make the most of your superfast connection.

What can you do with superfast broadband?

Superfast broadband allows you to download music and movies faster than ever before, with Virgin Media’s 50Mb package running at full speed you could download a music track in just one second or a 15GB high definition movie in less than an hour.

As well as allowing you to download movies and music at superfast speeds, the next generation of broadband packages also allow you to stream missed shows from catch-up services like the BBC iPlayer and Channel 4’s 4oD in high definition - without having to buffer and wait for them to load.

Online gamers will also love the fast, reliable connection you get from a superfast broadband package.

And you can use your superfast broadband connection to upload pictures and videos to Facebook and Flickr, connect to your office PC from home and send files to friends and family using FTP sites.

It also allows businesses to run faster, more advanced websites, with better email and FTP systems that allow them to compete with a wider market.

In the future, as high speed broadband connections become more common, more high-tech services and applications will be created, and even faster speeds could offer access to state-of-the-art entertainment services using TV and broadband content in full High Definition and even 3D.

What is the future for superfast broadband?

Broadband speeds are only going to get faster. Virgin Media has said that it is capable of much faster speeds than its current 50Mb and is currently trialling speeds of up to 200Mb in Ashford, Kent - faster than Japan and the USA.

While the current top speed for ADSL connections remains 24Mb, a UK-wide next-generation network is in the pipeline to offer faster speeds to more of the country, with BT pledging £1.5 billion towards the scheme and the Government setting up a 50p tax on all landlines to build up funds for the network.

What’s the situation in other countries?

Countries such as South Korea, Japan and the USA are all years ahead of the UK when it comes to broadband speeds, allowing us a look into what the future might hold for us.

Japan currently offers the world’s fastest consumer broadband at speeds of up to 160Mb - way beyond anything currently offered in the UK, while the USA has a top speed of up to 101Mb and South Korea is expecting to offer massive 1GB download speeds by 2012 - the same year that the UK Government has pledged that all homes here will have at least 2Mb.

The main reason for the differences in speed between the UK and countries like Japan and South Korea is that our main broadband infrastructure relies on BT’s old copper wire telephone network. This makes it expensive and time-consuming to upgrade and means that people living far from their local exchange or who are connected by poor quality wiring still suffer from painfully slow broadband speeds.

However, things are changing - Virgin Media now offers its 50Mb broadband across its entire network, while BT will have 1.5 million homes connect to its own fibre network by summer 2010 and 40 per cent of the UK by 2012.