Consumers may be forced to wait until the middle of summer before some of the UK's ISPs are able to start officially rolling out packages based on BT Wholesale's new Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) 'up to' 24Mbps ADSL2+ technology.

BT has already released the first WBC (21CN) activation dates for 868 telephone exchanges (news) to May 2009 and 82 of those will be live at next weeks launch on Wednesday 30th April. It will take until 2012 to complete a total nationwide rollout.

Naturally we were interested to find out what the ISPs had planned and have spoken off-the-record with several prominent providers about what they envisage for next weeks launch. One common concern among almost all the providers was the installation lead time.

The ISPs tell us that they will only be able to make orders for the new service from next week and have been frustrated by installation lead times of between 60 and 65 WORKING days (this is for the ISP and not end-users). Speaking anonymously, one ISP states:


It's a sentiment echoed by nearly everybody and means that consumer services probably won't surface until the latter half of this summer. The lack of coverage is also a problem for providers that have to spend a lot of money investing in new infrastructure, another ISP explained:


On the subject of pricing, most were adamant that consumers shouldn’t expect much of a change. Some ISPs are seeking to launch extra options, though most will either stick to their existing products, albeit offered at a higher speed, or ramp usage allowances ever so slightly.

Then there’s the question of speed, specifically how ISPs are planning to advertise such services, which remains a grey area. Though ADSL2+ is theoretically capable of delivering ‘up to’ 24Mbps, nobody will ever achieve that due to interference, line length and congestion. ISPs could not yet confirm their plans in this department but it seems probable that such services may be advertised similar to O2’s (Be), as being ‘up to’ 16 or 20Mbps.