BT Goes Slow with New ADSL2+ Broadband Speeds

IanFogg | April 30, 2008, 03:53 PM

BT's Broadband Connect is late (originally due January), and yet will initially only be available to a tiny fraction of UK households (under one million homes and businesses *).

BT's launch is even more tardy compared with others:

- BT's UK ADSL competitors -- Sky, O2, Be -- have been offering ADSL2+ to a wider footprint than this for a couple of years.
- Similarly, VirginMedia offer ADSL2+ equivalent speeds, to many more households.
- Elsewhere in Europe, ADSL2+ launched years ago: French ISPs starting offering ADSL2+ back in 2004, and are now in the process of major fibre to the home broadband network (FTTH) rollouts.

If this is BT's 21st century network, then those fibre (FTTH) networks are for the 22nd century.

BT appear to have reverted to the sloth of the Home Highway period, rather than building upon their more recent successes in extending DSL's UK availability so widely. (Home Highway was BT's late 1990s ISDN -- narrowband -- product that launched in the UK at the same time the rest of Europe was rolling out broadband).

I would love to say something more positive about this announcement, but BT appear to have gone very quiet in their analyst communications on 21CN and Wholesale Broadband Connect. So, all I have to go on are the details of the product offer, knowledge of other European markets, and what I hear from UK ISPs that sell BT's wholesale products... and none of that looks good!

* BT say 'available from exchanges serving around one million homes and businesses' therefore, given some of those telephone lines will not support ADSL2+ speeds, the actual number of homes and businesses that will be able to benefit is even lower than one million!