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BT claims 24Mbps available to half of UK

Following a slow but sure roll out of its 21st Century Network, BT now reckons more than half of the UK can access download speeds of 24Mbps through its Wholesale Broadband Connect offering.

By Jennifer Scott, 8 Feb 2010 at 12:27

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BT has confirmed that half the country now has access to 24Mbps thanks to one of its products.

The 21st Century Network (21CN) Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) offering from the company uses ADSL2+ technology to reach the 24Mbps download speed and it has now installed this in more than 730 exchanges across the UK.

This equates to giving half of all homes and businesses access to the connection type.

WBC was first launched back in April 2008 but roll out has been relatively slow compared to other companies like Sky and TalkTalk, which have had the unbundled technology since the mid 2000s.

BT has been investing heavily in next-generation broadband. Some £1.5 billion of funding was announced back in July 2008, which was earmarked for getting broadband speeds of up to 100Mbps into 10 million homes by 2012.

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2 comments

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Advertised speed

BT first advertised 8Mbps then 20, and now 24. I don't live in the half of the country that can supposedly get 24Mbps, I don't get 8Mbps as my 'up to' 8Mbps line is capped at 4Mbps giving realworld download speeds of between 1.5 and 3.5Mbps. If the same is true of the 24Mbps rollout with a 12Mbps cap realworld speeds will simply approach the 8Mbps download speed first claimed by BT. As an industry we need to stop firms, whether BT or other, from using "up to" or "access to", if the industry doesn't want the public to view us in the same light as politicians we need to start talking about, and advertising, our "realworld" speed, not some technically possible speed that would show as a 'blip' on any graph showing the median of attainable speed.

By Amtoz on Tuesday Feb 9

24Mbps?

Here in Edinburgh, capital city of Scotland, we have just been upgraded to 21CN - its great! I used to have speeds of about 2.2Mp bps, and now its rocketed up to 2.8! 2.8Mbps is the best BT can do, in a city centre! 24Mbps perhaps if you live above the exchange. To say that I have access to 24Mbs is similar to saying I have access to a Lambourgini and a banker's bonus.

By coldstream on Wednesday Feb 10