Chad Raube, director of internet services at Telewest Broadband, said that Telewest is determined to keep speed a key factor in the broadband market.
Because Telewest owns a modern fibre-optic network, said Raube, it is in a much better position than ISPs who sell ADSL as they are largely restricted to the products that BT Wholesale makes available.
"A 28Mbps link to the home would be feasible, but you're talking theoretically. Five or 6Mbps is within our range," said Raube. "When there's desire for faster speeds we'll offer it."
The fastest service available from Telewest is the 3Mbps service, which launched last month. Some rival providers have claimed that there is little real need for such a fast service, but the cable company believes that paid-for Web content will drive the need for faster services.
"We're positioning cable as the preferred platform for premium content partners. In 12 or 24 months, the key question will be how to use speed to provide better content," predicted Raube, implying that cable broadband services faster than 3Mbps could be available as early as 2005.
The subtext to Telewest's comments on speed is that the ADSL products sold by BT only work over a certain distance. The faster the ADSL link, the shorter the distance over which it will function. Telewest thinks this gives it a clear, long-term advantage, as under present conditions only a small proportion of existing ADSL customers live close enough their local exchange to actually get a 2Mbps connection.
BT, though, may be able to resolve this issue. Work is underway in Milton Keynes to raise the maximum distance over which a 512Kbps ADSL connection will work from 6km to as high as 10km. If it works for a half-megabit-per-second link, it should also work for faster ones.
"When the market for faster broadband services exists, we'll deliver it," a BT spokesman said. It could, though, be argued that if customers across Britain could actually get Internet access at 3Mbps down their phone line today, there would be a greater incentive for content creators to offer services that would take advantage of such bandwidth.
BT was also keen to point out that Telewest's network only reaches fewer than five million UK homes and businesses, while it can now offer ADSL to 90 percent of the population.
Talkback
The ADSL is very good for peoples who have got lower financial incomes because it is not as expensive as cable. But with the higher speed internet we also must think of the security. It means that if a normal home has 5mb transfer and very high bandwidth; the things can be done on the computer much faster by family's children such as downloading. And by the time parents catch up their kids on the PC about what they have been accessing on the kid will be more successful. In that respect with high speed I believe that monitoring will be much harder to parents and also employers. Unless you relay need high speed connection and bandwidth the ISP's should not allow everyone to get high speed connection.
lets see what Chad Raude director of internet
serive at telewest will do now with B T starting a new service this morning call BT BASIC for 19.99 at a speed of 0.5 meg this seems good value for the money when
compare to 256 serive?
BT's entry level offering is a joke, not only does it have a 1GB a month cap but the following charges will apply from summer 2004: exceeding 1GB per month will incur a charge of £4, exceeding 3GB per month will incur a charge of £8 and exceeding 6GB per month will incur a charge of £12.
NTL & Telewest are wiping the floor with BT in areas where both cable & ADSL are available and tha twill continue with cable not only up to 50% faster than BT but cheaper too.
I cant wait for aforadble (< £30) for a 3MB product. thats when we will see mass adoption, right now I pay about that much for a stinking 1MB pipe...i'm too embarassed to admit it to my euro friends.
8 years later from the last comment...
Virgin Media (NTL & Telewest) offer speeds of upto 120MBps.