News - BT raises broadband speed to 20Mb/s

[chuckskull]

Yay they doubled the upload speed to a massive 1mb, now it will only take me half a day to upload a few photos rather than a whole one.

Oh nevermind, it seems living a massive mile and a half from the town centre means I'm still on the old package and will be for a while. Also "consistently fast broadband through the day", is someone at BT taking the peas or what?

[crossy]

Explicit4u said "i dont get why this is bad for virgin as virgin offer up to 50MB, and quite possibly 200MB in the not to distant future."
Possibly... but only between the hours of 1am - 9am, any other times when you might want to use it (ie, during the day) and you'll get throttled down to the same speeds everyone else offers.

Ooo, that's so wrong. According to http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html...t/traffic.html there is no traffic management on the 50Mbps ("XXL") service. Okay, I'll be the first to admit that VM will probably have to impose management if they start getting more folks going for the top speed...

... which I figure they will do when they start letting folks with a Vermin phone line get that XXL speed for £28, (which I'll be doing - because it's only £3 more than I'm paying for my current 10Mbps line!) see http://pressoffice.virginmedia.com/p...695&highlight=. And speaking of speeds - I just checked my 10Mbps line and speedguide reckons I'm getting 8515kb/s - which seems pretty reasonable to me.

Heck, whatever their faults (and the shoddy cable TV boxes come very, very high up my list) Virgin has been a pretty good ISP for me. I need reliability because I work from home! So this BT announcement does exactly zero for me (I checked and I can bask in a whole 3.5Mbps from BT for more or less the same as I'm paying for my current 10Mbps VM line).

(Apologies if this comes across like a VM advert or if I sound like a stooge for them - I'm neither, merely a customer)

[LuckyNV]

BT estimates 7Mbps for me, up from about 5Mbps previously.

Odd how Be estimated 12Mbps, and I can actually connect upto 21Mbps...

[peterb]

BT estimates 7Mbps for me, up from about 5Mbps previously.

Odd how Be estimated 12Mbps, and I can actually connect upto 21Mbps...

Expectation management? If they estimate 7Mb/s, and you get 5, you would be pleased; if they estimated 20Mb/s and you got 15, you'd be disappointed. And if the estimate is based on post code rather than 'phone number. it will be even more conservative.

[Funkstar]

16.0Mbit (esimate)

Tempting, veeeery tempting

Especially as Zen estimated 3.5mbit and I connect at 8mbit according to my Draytek router.

One thing that isn't mensioned in the article though: Will this ADSL2+ connection be offered to other ISPs?

I would love to stay with Zen if they were able to buy the updated connection wholesale from BT.

[007]

Estimated speed of my line remains unchanged and I believe every ISP would be able to provide similar performace.At approx 6Mb line - I have 7Mb with O2(ADSL2+), used to have 3Mb with Tiscali and BT(ADSL) and up to 15Kb (!!!) with Virgin Media ADSL.
I feel so great because I no longer have to deal with amateurs from Virgin.

[LuckyNV]

Expectation management? If they estimate 7Mb/s, and you get 5, you would be pleased; if they estimated 20Mb/s and you got 15, you'd be disappointed. And if the estimate is based on post code rather than 'phone number. it will be even more conservative.

not at all, I live like 350m from the exchange, I did a phone check, every other ADSL2+ ISP said I could achieve at least 12Mbps and those figures were conservative since I can get upto 21Mbps, BT's and some other 3rd party non-isp sites are just plain inaccurate and at very least selling themselves short.

[Singh400]

Used be on BT, and got around 6.5Mbps. Recently moved to BeThere and now get 14Mbps. Entered my phone number into this new checker and told me I could get 7Mbps. Wow, thats awesome(!). I'll stick with BeThere thanks

[Salazaar]

Too bad for BT that I dumped them for O2/Be just over a month ago, I'm up to just over 10Mb/s from 7Mb/s and I'm paying about a third of what I did with BT.

[007]

Too bad for BT that I dumped them for O2/Be just over a month ago, I'm up to just over 10Mb/s from 7Mb/s and I'm paying about a third of what I did with BT.

You have not gained just speed. The level of CS is even more differentiated .Good move.

[Funkstar]

Used be on BT, and got around 6.5Mbps. Recently moved to BeThere and now get 14Mbps. Entered my phone number into this new checker and told me I could get 7Mbps. Wow, thats awesome(!). I'll stick with BeThere thanks

Have BT upgraded your exchange though?

If they haven't moved your exchange to ADSL2+, and BeThere have, then that is where the bandwidth difference comes in.

[Funkstar]

Oh, and WOOT!!

http://www.zen.co.uk/about/zen-intro...-services.aspx

Zen Internet introduces new "up to 20Mbps" broadband services
08 June 2009: Zen Internet, one of the UK's leading Internet Service Providers (ISP), announced today that it is introducing faster broadband services with download speeds of up to 20Mbps and upload speeds of up to 1Mbps at no extra cost for customers this summer.

I'll say that again, WOOT!!

[Mike Fishcake]

As someone stuck (in the sticks) at 512 kbps I'm quite sure that those of you with fast broadband already will get even faster. Those of us with slow speeds will keep the slow speeds.

Plus ça change and all that kind of thing..

I get 2.6 normally, and that BT site reckons I can get up to 2.0Mbit.

I'd actually be ultra-happy if they increased by upstream though!

[Singh400]

Have BT upgraded your exchange though?

21CN WBC status: Enabled as of 08/03/2008

Looks like they have. Maybe their checker was coded by a monkey and is wrong.

[xenos]

This is more useful: http://www.samknows.com/broadband/search.php

My exchange... 21CN WBC status: RFS date set : 31/03/2011

OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!

[badaybaday]

I'm on Cable, not quite 20M though.