BT is on track to start testing significantly faster broadband services next month, but only a small fraction of UK Internet users will be able to take part.
BT Retail announced on Monday that it is engaging in the wholesale trials of 8Mbps ADSL services, but that these high speeds will only be made available to its own staff — cutting down the number available to actual consumers.
"The first phase of the trial will be internal, but future information on customer involvement will be issued in the near future," said BT Retail in a statement on Monday. A spokeswoman added that BT Retail expected that more lines would be included in the trials this summer.
BT Wholesale generated significant interest when it announced back in February it was planning to test its ADSL services at speeds up to 8Mbps, compared to its current maximum speed of 2Mbps. But just 2,000 lines in Greater London and Strathclyde will be tested in the first phase of the trials, it emerged last week.
These trials will run for up to 12 weeks, from April, but the rest of the UK will have to wait until at least the second half of 2005. Even then, many people will live too far from their local exchange and will be stuck with slower speeds.
PlusNet surprised some rival ISPs last month when it announced that it was moving to a usage-based charging model in response to BT's trials. From April it will bill its users according to how much data they use, regardless of the speed of their line.
In February, PlusNet appeared to give the impression that 8Mbps services would soon be widely available with Marco Potesta, PlusNet marketing director, insisting that "speed will no longer be a factor in how people buy broadband."
The word from BT now, though, is that PlusNet may have jumped the gun.
"PlusNet was a little premature, as BT hasn't said which regions were included in the trial," said one BT Wholesale insider.
On Tuesday, a PlusNet spokesperson admitted that the 2,000 trial lines was a "lower number than anticipated", but predicted that this would increase beyond April.
Talkback
"Internet users keen to get 8Mbps broadband need to live in Strathclyde or Greater London. Working for BT Retail would also help"
Or realise there's more to the broadband world than BT and its affiliates, and talk to UKonline.
I'm in West Berks, with 8Mb from UKOnline. This has been available in mine and many other areas since the beginning of the year.
I think high speed broadband is a good idea and stupid at the same time whats the point of a dowload speed of 8mbs if the person sending it can only send at speeds of way less then half a meg ie 256kbps Providers nead to look at increasing the upload speed as well as the download speed of connection's this is one of the things i myself look for before buying broadband. I do study work on line and nead to send large files back and forth and it takes me ages to send large files back unless i whant to pay for a T1 connection ( I think not ) If i could get a download speed ov say 2-4 meg and a upload speed ov say 500 - 600 kbps i would rather pay for that than a 8mg connection that i would hardly ever get to use to its full power. Also it would be nice to see the north east included in these triles more often not just people down south to many time we are put on the back burner and last in line it seems like we count anymore . But thats just my veiw
Very goo point. That's why I use Bulldog's 8Mb product. It has 512k upload, works well.