BT Confirms Plans for 300Mbps Broadband Later This Year
And a new Home Hub for your troubles.
Back in February of 2012, UK telecoms provider British Telecom announced that it had successfully trialled "FTTP on demand." FTTP, or Fibre to the Premise broadband, is an evolution of BT's FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) solution that allows additional fibre to be run on demand to a home or business in an FTTC-enabled area. BT said last year that while FTTP speeds weren't previously possible in FTTC-enabled areas, it had developed a solution that takes advantage of the fibre it had already deployed between the exchange and the street cabinet. At the time, the company said the development meant FTTP could be made available anywhere in BT's fibre footprint and relayed plans to make the service, which is capable of offering speeds of up to 300Mbps, commercially available to all communications providers by the spring of next year.
As you may (or may not) have noticed, we're in the midst of summer at this stage, but BT today provided an update on that ultrafast fibre broadband. Speaking via a press release, British Telecom confirmed that it would "soon" be offering ultrafast 300Mbps FTTP service to customers. Though BT did specify that the service would initially be available withing 50 exchange areas where FTTP infrastructure has been deployed to date, it didn't give any clue as to when "soon" might be. The company's Infinity 300Mbps FTTP service will come with 20Mbps upload speeds and existing FTTP customers can upgrade to the new speeds via the £50 Unlimited package from BT.
BT also announced a new router, the Home Hub 5, for BT Infinity customers. When it launches later this year, it will feature superfast 802.11ac Wi-Fi and 4 GigE ports and an integrated VDSL modem.

I just wish for once UK companies would drop the prices of existing
link speeds, instead of increasing the speed at the same price level
again and again. Or at least give one the option. I haven't changed
my package in quite a while, but over time the monthly cost has
crept up from 76 to almost 100 per month.
billybobser, I have VM's 20meg setup atm. I get the full
20Mbit download speed most of the time. Tried grabbing
an 80MB file from my site just now, 2.3MB/sec sustained.
Ian.
Thusly, Ian's example is prime as it illustrates that an ISP advertised 20 Mbps connection reaches downloads of around 2.5 MB/s. So silly.
Thusly, Ian's example is prime as it illustrates that an ISP advertised 20 Mbps connection reaches downloads of around 2.5 MB/s. So silly."
Well transfer of data has always been measured 'bits per second' basis. It's not a gimmick from ISPs. Same goes for SATA I, II, III speeds, USB etc all are measured into 'bits per seconds'.
Data storage on the other hand, measured in bytes.
Thusly, Ian's example is prime as it illustrates that an ISP advertised 20 Mbps connection reaches downloads of around 2.5 MB/s. So silly."
Well transfer of data has always been measured 'bits per second' basis. It's not a gimmick from ISPs. Same goes for SATA I, II, III speeds, USB etc all are measured into 'bits per seconds'.
Data storage on the other hand, measured in bytes.
This is exactly what I am talking about. If you only get 700k internet, your bill should only be like $10...period!
Data storage on the other hand, measured in bytes."
Doesn't mean it's not silly. Just like the translation difference between GB and GiB. You have different groups developing interacting software that define things differently. Ideally, an standards group like the IEEE should standardize all such definitions (and have tried). To me, you should always define storage/transfer speeds as the highest whole integer (i.e. 1 MB/s versus 8 Mbps; 1 GB versus 1024 MB [Forgive me if I used GB/MB incorrectly if it was supposed to be GiB/MiB] )
F#$! BT, traffic shaping, horrible service terms, "bandwidth" locking to the max, and extremely frustrating customer service.
You've lost me completely. Are you saying you're mentally unable to convert between
Mbits and Mbytes? What's the problem? Just divide by 8. I've been naturally familiar
with binary, hex and such stuff since the early 80s, it's second nature to me, and that
was in the pre-mobile era; these days, I would expect bits & bytes to be taught in
schools from an early age. My post was meant to convey that the download speed I
personally observe is exactly what I expect it to be, and basically maxed out too.
I have no issue with ISPs using Mbits/sec in their advertising. If a reader can't convert
between such numbers and MB/sec, that's their problem.
What I do dislike however is the way the upload speeds one has are so much lower
than download speeds, which for a properly functional net link is not good. And the fact
that upload speeds are often missing from ISP PR, or hard to find on their product pages.
Ian.
Alas the UK had a missed opportunity in the early 1990s; BT offered to lay
fiber just about everywhere (total cost 12 billion), if the govt covered half
the costs, but the govt of the day declined, so nothing happened. Since then
UK services have always been kinda behind the curve. When my VM (Telewest
at the time) service was 4Mbit, I knew someone in rural France who had 20Mbit,
and they were provided with more than a dozen static IPs to use - in the UK,
even today, obtaining static IPs is a lot more expensive.
I remember ages ago the Japanese govt stated they wanted 100Mbit to
all homes by 2010. No idea if they achieved that, but it certainly seems
like Far East & Asian nations, especially South Korea, appreciate the
importance of moderns coms infrastructure. I don't know about the rest of
Europe, but in the UK it's always dragged out by arguments over who will
cover the initial costs (same as every other infrastructure row).
Ian.
You've lost me completely. Are you saying you're mentally unable to convert between
Mbits and Mbytes? What's the problem? Just divide by 8. I've been naturally familiar
with binary, hex and such stuff since the early 80s, it's second nature to me, and that
was in the pre-mobile era; these days, I would expect bits & bytes to be taught in
schools from an early age. My post was meant to convey that the download speed I
personally observe is exactly what I expect it to be, and basically maxed out too.
I have no issue with ISPs using Mbits/sec in their advertising. If a reader can't convert
between such numbers and MB/sec, that's their problem.
What I do dislike however is the way the upload speeds one has are so much lower
than download speeds, which for a properly functional net link is not good. And the fact
that upload speeds are often missing from ISP PR, or hard to find on their product pages.
Ian.
No, I am not saying a I cannot translate. I am simply stating that I wish (in vain) that there was more uniformity in data measurements. Written data is measured in KiB (I think), hardware space is written in KB (I think), and transport speeds are written as Kbps. The issue the former two (albeit I may have them backwards as listed) are the stranger being that you gain large discrepencies the larger the volume of data since one measures 1 KB as 1,024 Bytes, where the other does so as 1,000 Bytes.
The point is that translation is a matter of math, which is no concern, but it is more of, as I said, just plain silly that they have no deisre to standardize these measurements.
I empathise, but that's marketing I guess. People do no doubt fall for the numbers b.s. used
by many manufacturers & sellers. Bit like the whole .99 thing in product pricing. Do people
really fall for that? Sadly yes.
Coming from the SCSI world as I did, I always thought of 1MB meaning 2^20, so I certainly
found it annoying when first dealing with IDE/SATA drives to discover the much more simplistic
10^6 being used instead. Personally I felt it was misleading, given that users of a Windows
system do not see the OS using the 10^6 definition at all, eg. the Properties tab of a drive letter.
But what can ya do? That's the way the cookie crumbles. Companies will use whatever tricks
they can to sell their wares.
Ian.