BT to expand 24Mbps broadband coverage

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BT intends to almost double the reach of 24Mbps broadband connectivity across the UK, the communications provider announced on Thursday.

BT Wholesale — the division that supplies connectivity for resale by other ISPs — currently provides speeds of up to 24Mbps to around 40 percent of UK homes and businesses, with the vast majority of the rest of the UK getting up to 8Mbps.

Earlier this year, BT said it would expand 24Mbps coverage to 55 percent of the country, but it is now aiming for 75 percent coverage by the spring of 2011. This would cover around 20 million homes and businesses, BT said.

"Today's announcement is further evidence of BT's commitment to deliver next-generation broadband services across the UK," BT Wholesale products chief Cameron Rejali said in a statement.

Although BT's 24Mbps offering is based on its next-generation 21CN core network, it still relies on copper connections between telephone exchanges and customers. The company is currently trialling fibre connectivity — which promises speeds of up to 100Mbps — to homes and businesses, and intends to roll out such high-speed access to around 10 million homes and businesses by 2012.

BT will cut its copper-access wholesale prices for other ISPs from January 2010, with bandwidth charges falling by almost 50 percent and rental charges "standardised at the lowest current price", BT said in its statement.

Talkback

"BT will cut its copper-access wholesale prices for other ISPs from January 2010, with bandwidth charges falling by almost 50 percent and rental charges "standardised at the lowest current price", BT said in its statement."


Wholesale prices fall and yet the consumer price does not? bit of a cheek aint it considering how crap dsl qos is.

CA 26 September, 2009 03:31
Reply

This 24 Mbps expansion will increase crosstalk and intermodulation distortion on line bundles.. cue a load more long line ADSL customers dropping off like flies..

the faster speeds for those close to the exchange will come with an ever increasing "have and have not" result .. increasing the digitial divide..

well done BT :)

Kijoma 27 September, 2009 11:13
Reply

Things are not what they once where, thats true for single lined copper cables whether coming from exchanges or cabs signal to noise ratio's etc, the industry has recently discovered that they can over come those issues by taking a second copper line and wrapping or twisting it around the first copper cable already in place.

This dramatically reduces the noise from the first line and thus increases the integrity of the signal without having to amplify the current anymore, but how many of BT's customers or exchanges have had that upgrade already is anybody's guess, very few i would have imagined.

Even virgin are mindful of this, but when they laid the cables from the cabs to the houses they laid more than one per house anyways so its not such a biggie for them, their planning to utilize this to take there 50Mbit service to 100Mbit maybe even further, but I don't think virgin customers suffer quite as badly as ADSL customers on this front, because the cabs are closer to the homes.

Weather using FTTH/P or FTTC methods this is not really the issue everyone one should be worrying about because they will have lay/laid more than enough cabling, what customers should be worried about is the server backbone infrastructures, if this is weak then it doesn't matter what they put on the label the service will buckle then fail.

The only concern if you are a existing BT customer I would be worried about is if they plan to deploy FTTE exchange and not the FTTC method, because if they deploy it to the local exchange then the distance to the exchange problem will still exist.

CA 28 September, 2009 00:20
Reply

Rental prices may not be falling in line with Wholesale prices, but that probably reflects the fact that more wholesale bandwdith is being provisioned to cope with the increasing demands placed by video eg iPlayer. So for the same rental price customers may be getting more bang for their buck.

rizwiz 30 September, 2009 09:15
Reply

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