BT escalates UK broadband war with free upgrades to 20 Mbps

The broadband war in the UK has escalated with BT announcing free upgrades to more than double the headline speeds at 20 Mbps for its residential and business customers rivaling Virgin Media's March offer of speeds up to 100-150Mbps.

One of the largest communication companies in the world and the UK's largest communications service provider BT Group announced yesterday that it will more than double the headline speeds for its residential and business customers in the UK at no extra cost.

Out of BT's 4.8 million broadband customers, 60,000 of them have been already provided with speeds of up to 8Mbps, but from today, these customers will now get 20Mbps speed through a BT trial and the upgrade to ADSL 2+ technology without having to pay anything extra for the higher speed.

Although this higher speed for free will be most welcomed by BT's consumers, it appears to be a roll-back on its late March commitment of 60 Mbps speed that the company promised to give to half a million homes and businesses from early 2010. (See: British Telecom to give UK customers 60 Mbps broadband speed) 

Two days after BT made the announcement of providing its customers with 60 Mbps speed by 2010, its main rival, internet service provider Virgin Media, owned by Sir Richard Branson, rivalled BT's speed offer by saying that it would offer UK customers broadband speeds of 100 to 150Mbps in two years. (See: Virgin Media trumps BT with 150-Mbps broadband in the UK)

Virgin Media, in fact, had said on an earlier occasion that it did not want to come with higher speeds as the UK market was currently not conducive for absorbing faster broadband speeds and the company would not get its return on investment.

Last month, it had even started a customer pilot to test 200Mbps blisteringly fast speed in Ashford, Kent, four times faster than the 50Mb service currently available in the UK market.

Virgin's  200Mbps pilot scheme is believed to be the fastest implementation of DOCSIS3 technology in the world, running faster than services offered in Japan and the US, which currently reach 160Mb and 101Mb respectively.

BT is also conducting trials of 40 Mbps speed on the super fibre cables in areas such as Muswell Hill, London and Whitchurch, South Wales.

However, its present offer of 20 Mbps speed based on its 21CN platform, will initially be available from 549 telephone exchanges, serving more than 10 million, or some 40 per cent of the UK's homes and businesses and if the demand increases, then BT plans to extend that coverage to 55 per cent by March 2010 subject to customer demand.

As well as boosting download speeds, upload speeds will increase to up to 1Mbps. The company said that the faster service will enable customers to surf, upload or download data in a fraction of the time, even when several users are on the same connection.

This means less waiting around for complex web pages to download and graphics to upload. It is also good news for businesses looking to use rich media or boost their websites.

BT research has shown that one of the major causes of slower broadband speeds lies in customers' home wiring. To address this, BT is set to offer the BT Broadband Accelerator that eliminates electrical interference from telephone-extension wiring, and can improve broadband speeds and reliability.

BT will be giving away the devices free to consumers and businesses that are likely to benefit. Crucially, this will mean more customers with marginal broadband speeds will exceed the 2Mbps threshold required to benefit from the full range of new internet services.

Gavin Patterson, chief executive officer, BT Retail said "Unlike other providers, BT is upgrading customers to 20Mb/s for free. High-speed broadband provides a faster and more reliable service that will transform the way we live, work, learn and play. We are already the UK's largest retailer of broadband and today's announcement shows that we offer terrific value for money. We believe the true value of broadband is in helping customers enjoy the exciting new services that it makes possible. In line with the Government's Digital Britain review, we will be making higher speeds more widely available.''