BT announces faster broadband speed for 3 million customers

Fri 23 Apr 2010 8 Comments

BT Wholesale is to upgrade an additional 150 telephone exchanges across the UK in a bid to offer a 24Mb service to an extra three million of its customers.

The improvements form part of the Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) service, which is a roll out commitment by BT for providing better services to 75 per cent of UK homes and businesses by Spring of next year. The latest move is a follow up to the previous 148 exchanges that were upgraded during March of this year.

While the upgrade sounds impressive its coverage will have limited reach and focus on some specific geographical locations more than others. Areas that will see most expansion will include the West Midlands, the Liverpool-Manchester belt, the West Midlands, the south coast and the home counties, along with Northern Ireland.

The latest upgrade means that total coverage of ADSL2+ broadband will reach nearly two thirds of the British population, although BT has yet to confirm when the upgrade will take place. BT Wholesale general manager for broadband products, Emma Elshof, made the announcement on Monday at a private event in London called the BT ISP Forum.

This is the latest in an ongoing series of improvements to the BT copper-based network. The ADSL2+ enabled exchanges will be able to offer improved services from the company, which include broadband, digital TV and home phone lines. The WBC service should eventually mean that 16.8 million more UK homes and businesses will gain access to faster speeds of up to 24Mb.

Ms Elshof also spoke of further improvements being made on a rolling basis. "We are delighted to confirm this next tranche of exchanges but it doesn't complete this year's rollout schedule. We expect to announce more exchanges this summer as we remain fully committed to our intention to deliver WBC services to up to 75 per cent of UK homes and businesses by Spring 2011."

BT has also been investing more resources in its fibre optic broadband network, which it claims will offer broadband speeds of up to 40Mb, throughout the UK. According to the telecoms giant, homes and businesses in parts of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire are already enjoying an improved service as a result.

Originally published on www.mobilecomputermag.co.uk, now incorporated into Broadband Genie

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Comments

  • neutral

    by Fred Stentiford at 16:44 on 28 Apr 2010 | registered | 2 postsReport abuse

    This will not help rural areas. Anyone more that 2 miles from the exchange or a fibred cabinet will not see more than 2Mbps. The bandwidth physically will not go down the copper/aluminium wires unless some other provision is made.

  • unhappy

    by martin dearing at 15:09 on 29 Apr 2010Report abuse

    I want to know when BT are going to upgrade the lines/cables in my area to allow for faster broadband. At the moment 0.7mb is as good as gets which is disgusting in this day and age, I can't even stream videos on BT's own site with constant pauses.

    Please let me know when I can expect a better service, my exchange is oldham and please stop advertising the fact that you're rolling out even faster broadband speeds when I and many others can only get the very basic broadband speed!

  • unhappy

    by topov at 17:00 on 26 May 2010Report abuse

    bt is poor it keeps needing reboot and the most speed is 2.8

  • unhappy

    by neil at 09:21 on 13 Jun 2010Report abuse

    2.8 i would love to get that white knuckle speed, i keep doing the speed tests and all i still get is 0.25MB can you imagine watching a youtube video at that speed?

  • unhappy

    by Chris Stephens at 16:48 on 3 Jul 2010Report abuse

    I'm reporting BT to my local trading standards office. BT advertises that I can get 13mbps download but I get less than 2.

  • neutral

    by Supernova99 at 17:23 on 7 Jul 2010Report abuse

    Well mine has just been upgraded from 'up to 8mb' to 'up to 20mb'
    My line profile is showing 13mb
    My speed before the upgrade was 7mb an my speed after the upgrade is 7mb
    mmmmmmm.......................
    Marketing me thinks!

  • neutral

    by Rikkiboy at 21:45 on 27 Jul 2010Report abuse

    how do you find out which exchanges are being upgraded

  • unhappy

    by Grahamj at 08:23 on 15 Aug 2010Report abuse

    i am at present on option 1 20mb package and am consistently complaining of slow speed i am now trying as requested a new hub supplied free of charge from BT but as yet have only seen minimal speed improvement earlier this week i was averaging a download speed of 144kbps not bad eh Ha Ha now i am averaging 400kbps i still feel this amounts to theft charging for one thing and supplying next to nothing but how can we all change being consistently mugged location Medway Kent

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