BT have announced a further 148 exchanges that will be enabled with Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) which will allow the exchanges to provide BT's up-to 24meg broadband service. The exchanges will bring the service to more than 16.8 million UK homes and businesses by Spring 2011 which should see around 75% coverage. More exchanges will be announced this summer, as this further batch only puts coverage to 66%.
"We are delighted to confirm this next tranche of exchanges but it doesn't complete this year's rollout schedule. We expect to announce more exchanges this summer as we remain fully committed to our intention to deliver WBC services to up to 75 per cent of UK homes and businesses by Spring 2011."
Emma Elshof, (General Manager, broadband products) BT Wholesale
BT have also announced that they are improving service level agreement (SLA) targets aimed at the throughput levels across their WBC network. Previous targets were set at 2Mbps for 90% of the busiest 3 hours of the day, and this will change to 4Mbps. Premium lines had a target previously of 3Mbps but this will increase to 8Mbps.
Some interesting statistics have also come from the talk to ISP's today at the BT ISP Forum. More than 1.1 million end users use BT's WBC with more than 55 wholesale customers adding 20-30,000 end users each week to the platform. So far, coverage stands at 55% of UK homes and businesses including all BT line's in Oxford, 90% of London, Manchester and Brighton/Hove, and 80% of Plymouth, Leeds, Northampton, Bournemouth and Southampton.
Update 18:10
The full list of WBC exchanges that have been announced so far which will offer BT's Wholesale Broadband Connect services by 31st March 2011 which offer broadband speeds of up-to 24Mbps can be found here.
What a load of Rubbish.... LLU operators in Cheltenham have been offering up to 20 meg services for years. So in just under 12 more months they will introduce their "competitive" product which will no doubt be traffic shaped /throttled and limited to the point of being useless or at least far less than 24meg.
BT are holding this country back, and their retentions department are a load of liars who told me no other operator could provide better speeds (lie) and they would offer the 24meg service by march this year (lie).
BE broadband are about a million times better and also cheaper!