BT considering 50Mbps broadband
According to a report in the Financial Times, BT’s chairman, Sir Christopher Bland, has said that the company were looking at increasing broadband speeds to between 40 and 50Mbps.
Such a scheme could cost around £4 billion, and thanks to regulation and the high cost, BT would have to make a viable case for implementing it.
FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) and VDSL2 are great technology, but in a market where customers want to pay as little as possible for their broadband, BT would need to prove it could recoup the massive cost of development more quickly through value added services such as video on demand.
One comment by Sir Christopher is that no single application really needs 50Mbps of bandwidth, but it’s the combination of several devices all accessing the Net at once from a single connection that requires it. I’m not convinced, though. Video on demand over broadband would really benefit from a very fast connection, to minimise the download wait.
In any case, we needn’t get too excited – best-guess estimates suggest that if it happens, it won’t be until at least 2010, and even then will be on a trial basis.
Until then we chug along on our ‘up to 8 meg’ connections and make the best of it.
(Via Think Broadband)
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