Telco thinking bigger about faster fat pipe expansion plan...
NEWS
BT has announced it will extend its planned coverage of 24Mbps broadband to 75 per cent of the UK by 2011 - up from its previous target of 55 per cent.
The telco currently provides speeds of up to 24Mbps to around 40 per cent of UK homes and businesses. The vast majority of those outside this coverage area can get up to 8Mbps.
ZDNet UK has the full details of BT's 24Mbps expansion plan here.
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Comments
There are 14 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
Kinda a load of rubbish on BT's website about super-fast broadband....
When ran on my BT Broadband line, it says:
"We have tested your line and can confirm your line supports the UK's most complete broadband package, BT Total Broadband. We estimate your maximum connection speed to be 3.0Mbps. This is the fastest speed your line can support.
If you're an existing BT Total Broadband customer, whilst up to 20Mb will be available in your area, you are already recieving the fastest speed your line can support. "
- I currently get around 4-5Mbps as it stands, so this is plain wrong, wrong, wrong.
I re-did the checker using a friends business postcode who are in town where they could spit and hit the BT exchange. Says 20Mb 'available in the area', but 9Mbps is the max you can get. They are that close to the excange, they should be getting 24Mbps....
Some consistency and reality on the 'Super-fast broadband checker' is required, to avoid customer confusion and disappointment.
2. anonymous
"The vast majority can get up to 8mb" Obviously written by somebody sitting in London.
I live in Cheltenham (hardly Patagonia) where my, somewhat unreliable, 2.5mb seems to be the best of a straw poll of friends.
Even when 24mb comes to my exhange BT reckon I'll only get 4mb.
How many people live over 2 miles from their exchange ? An awuful lot.
3. James Button
Their tech peple assured me I can have 5.5MegaBytes a second at my address.
Given that, is it worth accepting anything their marketing people say as being accurate?
Then again SKY assured me I can have 20MegaBYTES, yes they assured me they did mean BYTES not bits, just about a £100 up-front payment needed
4. Mick Bonwick
Up to 8MBps. That's true, because 2Mbps falls into that category. On a good day and when everybody else is at work and I'm at home. And I live only 300 yards from the exchange! But then I suppose Oxfordshire is a bit rural.
5. anonymous
I live in Eversley, just south of Wokingham in Berkshire - certainly not the UK outback. I cannot get any speed higher than 3 Mb - most of the time I am floundering around at about 2.
The issue as always is the quality of the 'wires' over the last mile to the residential property.
If you have an old line that still works for voice - tough luck until BT need to upgrade you (because of a major fault).
As usual this is BT grabbing headlines without any regard to real customer service.
There are far more people in my position than BT cares to admit.
6. GALLEYSLAVE
24 meg sounds good doesn't it! but if when surfing you get only 3. whatever, it is possible that the server that the web site you are trying to do business with is in a 3.whatever area so how can you expect to see more.
If you are connected to another country
you might be lucky to see 2meg, more like 516k.
AT LEAST THAT MY UNDERSTANDING OF IT....
7. anonymous
3 miles from the centre of Basingstoke, we sync at an amazing 1.2Mbit/s - and that's without anything on our premises upsetting the signal. Broadband support is our business!!
A few people here can get over 2Mbit/s but they are on a different cable from the exchange. No point in even trying to ask BT to move some of the rest of us onto it too, of course, even though we all come through the same green box outside the Village Hall.
A few hundred meters away is a BT exchange serving only a Hi-tech business park. There you are tripping over different telco's footway boxes.
There are thousands of us in the same boat, or worse, here and elsewhere around Basingstoke.
I even know of people in the vicinity where BT has given up trying to make ADSL work at any speed at all.
It really is a disgrace. All this `high speed' talk just makes us even more angry. Fibre to our cabinets to give us a few Mbit/s is a much higher priority than pandering to profligate people who just use the Internet for entertainment.
8. karen challinor
oh to live in Seoul where you can get a guaranteed no contention gigabit/s rated line for an equivalent of £10 per month and there's none of this 'up to' garbage as well
where tv is available on your mobile phone via 200 or so free to air channels not some hyper expensive option sold to you by your service provider
we on the other hand only get technological advances when someone figures out how to make money out of us for using it
9. anonymous
For people with shoddy Broadband, the BT Broadband Accelerator attachment for your Master Socket very often does the business....
Without 2-3Mbps
With 4-5Mbps.
Highly recommended, and I think comes with a money back guarantee.
Stepping back from the BT bashing, I don't see much stepping up to the mark from Virgin Media, Sky, Talk Talk etc.....
Come on Branson, environmentally hateful Space Rockets for the uber-rich and F1 sponsorship are great dolly-bird PR, but how about Virgin Media push the boat out on infrastructure and deliver some hope to the masses...thinking not.....!
10. anonymous
Noted this survey this morning.
Much is made of Korea and 1Gbps.
Apparently this is only a Government promise, and is not due until the end of 2012. I can't imagine there won't be some small print on this, as some farm halfway up a mountain won't be getting 1Gbps provided as won;t be financially viable. Therefore Universal 1Gbps in Korea is a much mis-quoted pipe-dream.
11. karen challinor
I didn't say South Korea I said Seoul and 1Gb/s isn't a pipe dream there
12. anonymous
Live just South of Wokingham with Broadband Max speed 512Mb for the last 3years. Worse still we are sat in the middle of IT & Telecomms central - and this is the Best they can do. Shame on them relegating this country to such low speeds compared to our equals in the EU.
Snails Pace
13. srawl
Luck you! I live in Finchampstead and barely get 1mb. Absolute joke that we live so close to Reading and London. Tax on broadband my arse; how about they sort out our internet with the tax we pay to them first.
14. srawl
That was a comment to the person who lives in Eversley btw not Wokingham person :)