It’s easy to see that ADSL Max has got everyone rather excited at the moment. Forum posts on the subject are seemingly endless in number and the bt.com/broadband website seemed to slow a crawl at midnight as the nations most eager broadband users simultaneously clicked “Go” on the availability checker.
However, a note of caution. ADSL
A much needed update of the Availability Checker has finally been completed. This adds support for ADSL Max, Be, Wanadoo, Zen, Edge and also improved data for Now wireless services. There are also a few other additions that will be completed over the coming weeks.
The updated checker builds directly on top of a new Availability
PlusNet today announced that, following successful trials, it has reached agreement with Tiscali UK for Tiscali to supply wholesale broadband network services to PlusNet utilising its Local Loop Unbundled (LLU) infrastructure.
Speeds up to 8Mb will be available within Tiscali’s LLU service areas using ADSL and speeds of up to 24Mb will be possible in areas
Today the last exchange in Surrey was enabled Forest Green, this now provides the area with 100% enablement of exchanges.
More information can be found here on the Connected Surrey Partnership site.
Today BSkyB outlined plans to bring the total number of LLU exchanges to 750 by the end of 2006 and 1,200 by 2007. This is equivalent to about 70 percent of homes, their current rollout only reaches 20 percent of homes in the UK.
You can find a list of the existing Easynet enabled exchanges here.
Be have brought forward the enablement dates of a further four exchanges in the past 2 days. Chingford, Kidbrooke Gipsy Hill and Finchley are all now live for Be’s 24Mbps ADSL2+ product. This brings Be’s coverage to 86 exchanges in total, with a further 41 due to be enabled by the end of March.
The full
We’ve received an update on the rollout of ADSL Max today, and can report the following figures:a
Max enabled exchanges: 75
Exchanges with “Green” enablement dates: 3376
Exchanges with “Amber” enablement dates: 1857
Exchanges with “Red” enablement dates: 44
Exchanges not due to be updated (”Black”): 239
Green exchanges can be treated as very likely meet their target date. Amber exchanges
Following recent requests, I’ve added an RSS feed for the news published on this website. This will allow you to read our news using an RSS news aggregator such as Mozilla Thunderbird. I have to admit that it’s something I’ve personally managed to avoid for the past few years, but have recently tried it and
The Register is carrying a story on the latest Ofcom views on making high speed net access a part of service providers universal service obligation (USO). Ofcoms view is that for the moment high speed net access should not be part of a USO.
Ofcom was quoted as saying, “By imposing a USO and in choosing
Be have today announced that they are conducting trials of the Annex M ADSL2+ standard on their network. Annex M allows for an increased upstream rate, and Be have stated they intend to increase theirs to 2.5Mbps.
Trials have been underway since late 2005, and these have seen upstream speeds of up to 1.9Mbps, which is
Andrew Davies, Minister for Economic Development and Transport, has today announced that BT have been awarded the contract to supply broadband to the remaining 35 unviable exchanges in Wales. Work will commence immediately, with the first RFS date due at the end of June. 32 RFS dates were released in total, which can be found
Today seems to of been a busy day for some of the LLU providers.
Wanadoo remove two exchanges from the unbundling rollout plan, these unlucky exchanges are Almondsbury and Waltham Cross. Seven exchanges have been pushed back from 30/04/06 to 31/07/06 these can be found here
Be Unlimited released another exchange today, Woodford This brings the total
3 exchanges have their enablement dates pushed back 2 weeks. Horsington, Tongue End and Winceby all see their enable dates moved from from 24/03/06 to 02/04/06.
However, in better news, 2 exchanges have had their dates moved forward. Hamstall Ridware, originally set as 28/06/06, and Rackenford, originally set as 21/06/06, are both being moved to 12/05/06.
With
Ofcom today announced the next stage of its work to encourage competitive Next Generation Networks (NGNs).
NGNs use digital technology to connect telephone calls and other network traffic more efficiently than traditional telecoms networks. Internet Protocol (IP) based services can be developed more quickly and at lower cost to communications providers.
Over time NGNs will offer consumers
BT have today announced that they have signed the remaining four contracts for suppliers for the 21st Century Network rollout. Rather unsurprisingly, Alcatel, Cisco, Ericsson and Fujitsu are the four additional prefered suppliers that now join the existing list of Ciena, Huawei, Lucent and Siemens.
BT’s 21CN plans involve moving the entire telecommunications network to an
Be Un Limited have quietly enabled Hornchurch, Hampstead, Leytonstone, Walthamstow, Cricklewood and Southall exchanges for the 24Mbps unbundled ADSL2+ service. This brings the total number of exchanges unbundled by Be to 76. A further 342 exchanges are scheduled to be unbundled by the end of September this year.
However, there was some bad news for people
BT today confirmed the launch date for ADSL Max products.
This will allow people to obtain line rates of up to 8Mbit/s, enabling them to get more out of their broadband connection. The ADSL broadband speed that can be supported on an individual line is governed by a wide range of physical factors.
BT estimates that
Homechoice customers can now benefit from a speed upgrade for free.
1Mb becomes 2Mb and the 2Mb service becomes 4Mb.
On the Homechoice website they are now offering connections at upto 8Mb.
There coverage is fairly limited to within the M25 and Stevenage at the moment this may change in the coming months.
List of exchanges can be found