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BT bumps up UK broadband speeds to 20Mb/s

Posted by David Walker on Tue 18 Aug 2009

But only for 40 per cent of the people

Good news if you happen to be a BT broadband customer, your connection is about to get a free boost in speed. At least, some of you are.

It's the ADSL2+ upgrade we mentioned some time back, using that and the existing copper wires to bump up speeds to a maximum of 20Mb/s, with upload speeds also increasing from up to 448Kb/s to up to 1Mb. Obviously that's the headline speed, so if you don't get the 8 meg speed now, you're unlikely to jump up to 20Mb/s overnight. But you will see an increase in speed if you are in the right location. Where the faster zones will be isn't clear, BT says 549 exchanges serving 10 million – or 40 per cent - of the UK’s homes and businesses will benefit. So we'll presume the main built-up areas of the UK. Those numbers should increase to 55 per cent of homes by 2010.

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If that's not enough or you don't get lucky with the speed increase, BT has another trick up its sleeve, the BT Broadband Accelerator. It might sound like a mad professor's lab creation, but the Broadband Accelerator is a fairly simple tool, a small plate that you can easily insert into your main telephone socket to reduce the impact of electrical interference. Doing that *could* increase your broadband speed by 1.5Mb. According to BT research, one of the main causes of slow broadband is customers’ home wiring, so if your connection is sluggish, it might be worth a punt.

The Broadband Accelerator is free (except for postage) to Total broadband customers. The speed increase, to 20Mb/s is just free. Who says you can't get something for nothing?


Link: BT

 

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