Despite heavily misleading marketing campaigns from certain ISP’s saying that “8Meg broadband is now available”, it’s not and it hasn’t been. It will however be possible to get 8Mbit/s broadband from the end of this month providing your pretty close to your local exchange and your line quality is good. BT estimate that around 78% of phone lines will be able to get at least 4Mbit/s, with 42% able to get 6Mbit/s and around a third should be able to get the full 8Mbit/s speed. Upstream will increase too, at present all “normal” broadband services only allow 256kbit/s upload. The new products will mean between 160kbit/s to 448kbit/s upstream rising to 832kbit/s on premium services.
BT Wholesale will begin upgrading 5,300 of Britain’s local telephone exchanges from March 31st- covering 99.6% of homes and businesses.