My previous post on Virgin Media achieving much faster speeds than other broadband providers over the next few years got me thinking. Was I right?
BT will be able to provide up to 24Mbps when it rolls out its 21CN network over the next 3 years, but it is dependent on the distance from the exchange. So some will not get close to these speeds. Virgin Media is already trialling 50Mbps in the UK and can get speeds up to 120Mbps with no problems relating to distance from the exchange. So it still looks to me like Virgin Media has the speed advantage over the upcoming years.
BT could spend something like £5bn and roll out VDSL instead which would initially allow speeds up to 30Mbps but could go up to 100Mbps again subject to distance from the exchange. There doesn’t seem to be any plan to do this though right now. Alternatively they could roll out fibre to the home at a cool £15bn.. giving 50-100Mbps which would be the same platform as Virgin Media. I have read somewhere that the government was looking at the possibility of funding the roll out of this type of network. Strikes me they did this already – it is called Virgin Media!!