[Ignition]

Originally Posted by DeadKenny

True but some of the bigger exchanges are being upgraded fairly frequently.

Ah that'll be why www.samknows.com shows several exchanges over capacity.

It's surprising how quick it could happen. A year ago 1Mbps ADSL was just a dream and BT were reluctant to let people sign up even for 512kbps if they weren't close enough. Turned out the restriction was not technical however, just BT were sticking to theoretical tolerances but with a bit of tweaking and a more relaxed policy they found they could reach much futher and increase speeds.

1Mbps ADSL has been available since the beginning, just not on a home package. As has 2Mbps. Top package available from BT for either businesses or offices, 4 years after commercial launch, and 8 years after trials (done at 2Mbit downstream) are.... 2Mbit. There's progress and innovation at its' finest.

Cheap 2Mbps ADSL has come about much quicker than I expected.

Still, as I say, I'm interested to see what NTL do with ADSL.

Give it time with 2Mbps ADSL, as Plusnet and all the other 2Mbit IPStream users get migrated to 50:1 once the 2Mbit home product is out. Considering that more than one person I know on the 2Mbit OFFICE class 20:1 pipes that these are running on at the moment is suffering problems due to an oversubscribed exchange I'm sure that when at nominal 50:1 service will be.... interesting

I asked a BT communications manager why BT were so reluctant to release 3Mbit. His response was a tacit one, but basically came down to BT offering what their network can provide at the moment.

BT have just completed an upgrade run, nonetheless 10% of their exchanges are overcapacity at the moment - http://www.samknows.com/broadband/capacity-summary.php

If they are having this much trouble with 512k - 2Mbit I'm not optimistic about higher speed products coming from BT at a reasonable price.

LLU is the only thing that'll even look like doing this, however as previously said ADSL2 is still not approved as part of the ANFP, ADSL2+ a similar story. Until this is done it's illegal to deploy these technologies in the UK. Even when done neither of these helps that much with range of DSL. A couple of hundred metres that's all really, just means you can bond lines easier and if you are really close you can get fast services. However at the moment said faster services would max a small exchange's backhaul single handedly...