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New BT Technology should spell an end to sluggish broadband. Over the next three years starting from the end of April, BT will start upgrading its exchange to provide broadband connections running at up to 24 megabits per second. That's three time the present limit of 8Mbps and is all thanks to a technology called ADSL2+ which transmits the data signal down the line on a carrier frequency twice as high as the present ADSL2. There are no clear answers at this point as to what these changes mean for consumer and ISP alike. Furthermore, there remains the question of whether ISPs which put their own equipment in local exchanges (the process known as local loop unbundling, or LLU) will also be able to offer faster connectivity. The connection speed issue is a tricky one. The "up to 8Mbps" figure is already one of the most derided in UK broadband; according to Nielsen Onlin, only 3% of us live close enough to an exchange to get it. That's because broadband speeds fall off with distance from the exchange. By summer 2009, BT will have enabled around 850 exchanges serving up to 13 million users (it has around 5,500 UK exchanges) and aims to complete the "vast majority" of the work by 2011. Andrew Ferguson, of thinkbroadband.com says BT's ADSL2+ product - called Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) - won't be adopted by ISPs immediately. "I am expecting a few providers to launch trials that will last a few weeks or months and larger providers may not launch properly until a large chunk of the country is covered" he says. Source: The Guardian, Thursday April 17th 2008 Article by, Michael Pollitt
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