BT has upgraded its broadband network to offer home and business users download speeds of up to 20Mbps and uploads of up to 1Mbps.
The shift to ADSL2+ technology brings BT's speeds closer to those of competitors such as Virgin Media, which for a higher price offers speeds of up to 50Mbps to some of its cable customers. Until Wednesday, BT's maximum download speed was 8Mbps using ADSL2 technology.
Prices are unchanged, although existing customers wanting the faster speeds will need to restart their contract with BT, with a minimum term of one or two years.
Forty percent of the population can get the new speeds through 549 telephone exchanges, which cover around 10 million UK homes and businesses. BT says it will extend that coverage to 55 percent by March next year "subject to customer demand".
The faster speeds are based on BT's next-generation 21CN platform, but have nothing to do with fibre-to-the-home, a technology currently being trialled by the company. Currently, 100Mbps fibre-to-the-home connectivity is available to customers in the Ebbsfleet Valley development in Kent, and BT says it will trial 40Mbps fibre-to-the-cabinet technology in Whitchurch, South Wales and Muswell Hill in London this summer.
Jerry Thompson, director of products and online at BT Business, acknowledged that some rival service providers had adopted ADSL2+ years ago, but said now was "the right time [for BT] in terms of customers' adoption and the state of the technology".
Real-world broadband speeds almost never reach the so-called 'headline speeds' — in this case 20Mbps. This situation is the result of several factors, chiefly the user's distance from the exchange and the quality of wiring in the user's building.
Thompson said that, when customers sign up, BT will always tell them what speeds to expect given the state of their line. He also said that the ADSL2+ upgrade will effectively double users' real-world speeds — a customer who got 2Mbps on their "up to 8Mbps" package, for example, will now get 4Mbps.
Talkback
How about BT first make sure that their existing network is where it should be? For the last six months I've been paying for 8mb when in reality the average connection speeds I achieve are 1mb. I wonder how many people BT have paying for high speed broadband while they're actually only delivering little more than would have been acceptable 5 years ago. What worries me is the vast number of people out there that don't have the know how to check that they're recieving the service they're paying for.
<I>"He also said that the ADSL2+ upgrade will effectively double users' real-world speeds — a customer who got 2Mbps on their "up to 8Mbps" package, for example, will now get 4Mbps."</I>
If only I could believe this.
I recently did a check against various broadband speeds in my area (I'm connected to the <A HREF="http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/LNADK">Albert Dock</A> exchange) and found that if connected to BT on an 'up-to-8Mbps' connection I could achieve a maximum speed of around 3.4Mbps. If connected to Be's 'up-to-24Mbps' service I could achieve a maximum speed of around... 3.4Mbps!
So how, I wonder, does BT apply their new 20Mbps service to double my connection speed? If they can make that a firm promise, then sign me up! But sign up for a 2yr contract to get the same speed I have now? hmm...
BT played it's final card after virgin announced the new 50 Mbit Fibre optic service, a true 8 Mbit Service is already a hard achievement let a long 20, this is not only due to noise in copper telephone lines and old wiring/equipment. it's also the distance between your home and the telephone central that makes it so hard to achieve such speeds, and even if it does you will most probably have connection issues, being disconnected every few minutes, unless of course you live in the telephone central or downgrade you connection to adsl2.
Fibre optic/wireless are the future just do a quick search on DOCSIS and you will understand why.
In some countries in Europe like my own ISP's are already offering 100 Mbit services for some time now and with this technology they can go up to 400 downstream and 100 upstream, with no loss of connectivity.
that being said bt in a last resort effort to grab it's clients BT offers this "20" Mbit service IF and only IF they renew their contracts for 1 year at least. This is definitively not fair for existing clients and most definitively not an intelligent move. If they offered unlimited downloads to all packs and this service ( despite only very few ppl will actually take advantage of it) they might have a chance of surviving the ISP war for some more years, but with actions like this i'm afraid they are pretty much dead.
Regarding the upto 20Mbps ‘hype’- I believe its possible that you could receive an overall better/faster broadband connection from an ‘upto’ 8Mbps ISP, than an ‘upto’ 20Mbps as its far more dependant on how each ISP manage their network.
Here's why:
This upgrades the ‘technical line quality’ (the mechanism used to transmit the signal to your house) ie. 20MB/s from 8MB/s. A look at plus.net (Owned by BT) Option 1 (an Entry Level Broadband product) Maximum Download Speeds see here:
http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/quality_broadband/speed.shtml#valuespeeds
Shows that this ‘upgrade’ make absolutely no different as most traffic is limited to a maximum 2Mbps and generally a lot lower, especially peer to peer at peak times.
Web traffic isn't traffic shaped, but streaming is on BT (at peak times), but not plus.net. Overnight traffic isn't traffic shaped, but
Traffic is also prioritised on top of this. Where the overall capacity is reached - throttling is used on all types of data (such as peer to peer) to manage overall demand - normally targeted at heavy users first - this might happen if you have used more than your ‘acceptable’ daily quota.
Also if you live on 3.5km from the exchange there is little (a nats whisker) difference between ADSL and ADSL2/ADSL2+, in terms ‘technical line quality’ so even without BT’s data throttling there would be little improvement for most customers.
First look at your ISP - are you traffic shaped?
What sort of data are you mostly accessing?
Web,video streams, http downloads, ftp, peer to peer etc as various ISP (inc BT on its most popular tariffs) place ‘traffic shaping’ on certain type of data to levels way below 2Mbps normally at peak times of the day - it might not effect web traffic but most other common data types.
What is your contention ratio (how the connection infrastructure is shared with others (upto 49 others) 50:1 or 20:1
If all 49 others are downloading at the same time - it will severely affect your connection. with 20:1 there are only 19 others so your chances are better.
How far do you live from your exchange.
Rural exchanges, there is more of a chance your some distance from your exchange, line quality possibily poorer.
ADSL2+ technology, 20Mbps is very limited to areas close to the exchange - and it falls off quickly to data levels ’similar’ to 8Mbps after a set distance. I say similar, by this I mean if you expect 20Mbps (not many will get this speed)- don’t be too optimistic- you might see slight advantages/disadvantages but they are nothing to write home about unless the exchange is visible from your house. It depends on lots of factors, quality of line, internal wiring in house, even your router (needs to be ADSL2 compatible), or if you are wirelessly accessing your router.
This is a technology which sounds great on paper, but in reality its seems more a means to squeeze out a little bit more from BT’s massive investment in copper for as long they can and use headline grabbing 20Mbps, to keep non technical Politicians happy.
All the above factors are currently far more important than headline grabbing 20Mbps - and service your receive is still generally set by price you pay - but don’t go only on download limits such as ‘10GB a month’ or ‘unlimited’. Far better to look for ‘no traffic shaping’ - look at graphs which should capacity saturation of their networks.
Ask them what happens when network saturation occurs. How often does this occur. If their network is constantly saturated/running at capacity at peak times- 20Mbps is a distance dream.
I'd like to see ownership of the local loop brought back into 'locals' control. BT seem to have made it clear that they either want large subsidies to install fibre, insisting its just not economically viable. Maybe it really isn't but they clearly don't seem keen to take the financial risk. They played the same game for ADSL (and in places like Northern Ireland 10M European funding was paid out, when commercial demand has shown viability)
Rural towns and villages, where say BT has a monopoly - ie. no local looping unbundling/(one provider BT wholesale) - I doubt will ever get Fibre. If BT aren't going to do it - we need to get the cabling back in your hands and mobilise the local community to install ducts and cables between houses, utilising voluntary labour - its that important. The community then owns the fibre and then this network can be connected to an operator of our choosing.
BT: In the meantime unused cables in wiring to streets should be ultilised to offer certain customers faster broadband connections over copper , by combining cores - particularly in strategic towns. There is no justification to have unterminated copper cores- spare capacity - this can be sold as faster connections. This could also be a means of gauging demand, installing new cabling as demand required -piecemeal.
Another option is strategic towns where rurally Broadband matches the Big Cities and links between strategic towns offer 3G Broadband along the routes between. This would allow people to live in their communities and work locally.
BT's option of hyping ADSL2+ is not a long term option. 2Mbps broadband is not a realistic minimum standard to enable all areas of the UK to compete equally when European Cities are being overed 50x this speed. Hi-tech rural companies just can't compete on 2Mbps against a company with a 100Mbps connection.
Otherwise two tier Britain will stay for good.
A good current example of two tier Britain, is the iphone 3GS (reliant on 3G) - many places have little or no 3G, yet o2 will still try and sell you a handset for £274 and charge you £35 a month, then charge you £15 a month tethering - when large areas (without 3G) can't even take advantage of this.