End of an Era as UK ISP Aquiss Switches Off Final ADSL Broadband Service
Shropshire-based independent UK ISP Aquiss has today announced that they’ve completed the company’s withdrawal from all legacy ADSL copper broadband services by switching off their final connection. The last ADSL line, which was first commissioned on 3rd September 2007, was disconnected on 3rd August 2026 as the customer migrated to a full fibre FTTP service.
For those who may have forgotten. Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) was one of the very first fixed broadband technologies to be deployed in the UK, which originally used an existing PSTN/POTS or twisted pair copper (sometimes also aluminium) “telephone” line to communicate and eventually offered download speeds of up to 20-24Mbps – there were various evolutions of ADSL, such as up to 8Mbps capable ADSL Max and up to 24Mbps capable ADSL2+.
The technology was a huge improvement over early narrowband dialup connections that struggled to deliver speed faster than 56Kbps on a single line, albeit one that also caused plenty of frustrations due to signal degradation over distance and other issues. Thankfully most consumers have long since moved onto more modern, faster and reliable broadband technologies (e.g. FTTC/VDSL2, FTTP/B and DOCSIS 3.1 / Hybrid Fibre Coax).
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A spokesperson for Aquiss said:
“For over 20 years, ADSL played a vital role in connecting our customers. Today, with the switch-off of the very last ADSL service, that chapter has officially closed. While VDSL represented a step forward from ADSL, full fibre is the clear destination. We are supporting all remaining VDSL customers through a smooth transition to FTTP, delivering substantially faster and more reliable broadband for the future.”
Aquiss now similarly expects to conclude its remaining VDSL broadband services within the next year or so as it continues to migrate customers to modern and much more “future-proof” Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) connections. We should point out that some remote rural communities and a smattering of digitally disadvantaged urban areas are still stuck in ADSL-only areas (fixed lines), although even many of these can often get faster speeds via modern 4G/5G mobile broadband networks or Starlink’s LEO satellites.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Does that mean that Aquiss will refuse to offer service to new customers where a fibre connection is not possible? (I can appreciate why they would take that stance for operational simplicity although it is “cherrypicking”)
Plenty of IPS not offering ADSL anymore, I think they still offer VDSL if you want that.
ADSL technology has no future anyway, and i wouldnt be surprised if Openreach incentivises ISPs not to add any new users to the ADSL network. Even things like SOTAP, EVA and SOTAP for Analogue are all just temporary things which dont allow new customers. Anyone served by FTTP or SOGEA can only order these techs, and for SOGEA, it also has no future as no new cabinets are being installed.
I imagine in the not too distant future (5 years maybe?) it will only BT Group ISP’s offering copper products anyway. Most ISP’s are connecting with other FTTP networks as well as Openreach & will come to the conclusion that the relatively small amount of copper customers left aren’t worth their time & money servicing.
Does VDSL outperform ADSL2+ in all possible situations
(i.e. the VDSL negotiates down to ADSL-type speeds–sub 20–due to line quality or length).
I would like to presume so (hence really no need for ADSL anymore) but is the technical reality inconveniently the case that ADSL (of any sort) is better in some limited cases?
ADSL [Max and 2+] only really matters for exchange-only lines which were migrated to cabinets, primarily because nearly all instances of this involved the cabinet being placed at the exchange, negating any meaningful benefit to long lines.
The only places where this will logically matter are rural areas, which at this point are being migrated to FTTP: in the cases of urban areas with EO connections, they’re often short so get top speed from ADSL2+ anyway.
VDSL will almost always be better than ADSL, often because the cabinet will be closer to the property: in my previous property, i could only get 2.5mbps download on ADSL tech, but could have had 8-9mbps download from the VDSL service, with 1mbps upload, simply because the cabinet was closer. Only issue is VDSL doesnt work very well at distance, so after 2km, you’re often better off just using ADSL if its providing the same speeds.
As noted above, its very likely the only ISP which will offer ADSL for the next 15 years will be BT, Plusnet and EE. Most other ISPs will not bother provisioning circuits on ADSL.
My mother was something like 3.20km from Exchange in straight line (not cabling route length). VDSL would not have worked accroding to BT at the time, but ADSL used to hold a sync somehwere between 7-8mbps.
Admittedly, I had custom firmware on the router and was Broadcom chipset, so was able to tweak the SNR values to get a higher line sync with 3db noise margin. Her cabinet was enabled for VDSL, but BT wouldn’t make it available. Anyway, around 2019 she got full fibre and never looked back. Then an Altnet installed fibre in 2024. I waited till 2026 before any full fibre came available and not living in countryside on my own (but near).
There’ll be some instances where long D sides mean VDSL (FTTC) won’t work but ADSLx will
VDSL2 will outperform ADSL2+ out to about 3km (of high-quality new copper), after that ADSL2+ performs better. If you have poor-quality (or very old) copper or Aluminium then the effective distance will reduce.
VDSL2 isn’t allowed in exchanges (because of the frequency plan), so lines that connected directly into an exchange were forced to stick to ADSL2+ until they were moved to a cabinet in the street outside (I think they’re all migrated now).
Do VDSL modems/routers generally also support all the versions of ADSL automatically (if that’s what the line offers), so that customers where the only current terrestrial choice is ADSL can use up to date, supported, secure equipment (and the ISP has commonality in their estate)? Or is most kit now VDSL (and ethernet WAN for ONT connection) only?
Or is customer endpoint equipment also becoming a problem for the edge cases stuck on ADSL for reasons explained above? (Maybe resolved by the availability of a standalone modem that takes a similar role as a ONT in a FTTP setup; I remember some early ADSL equipment came supplied as a wifi router and separate ADSL modem, Buffalo IIRC did this)
Yes most router-modems will sync to whatever DSL service is on the line.
Or I should add most modern modem-routers. BT Hub 5 was the first integrated VDSL router in 2013 and that worked with ASDL & VDSL. Before that Openreach fitted a separate VDSL modem.
I think EO lines in urban areas are pretty common, here on my street in fairly central London the only thing available (still!) via Openreach is ADSL at 3-4Mbit ….long line, and apparently mostly aluminium cable from the 70s making the line awful for broadband) We are now on community fibre (only in the last year) so all is well but prior to them arriving it was a massive problem.
Openreach are building (very slowly) FTTP here, but I can imagine there are lot of small areas (perhaps only one street/terrace, same as here) in the country that will get left behind at least for a good few years yet.
Quite a few rural areas where the VDSL2 (SoGEA) cabinets are at capacity.
The cabs in my village have been full since 2019.
The BT Wholesale checker says only SoADSL is available.
BT Consumer only offers 4G mobile broadband which,unless it’s between 2am and 6am, is a barely usable joke.
Does anyone know of a consumer ISP that retails SoADSL services?
FTTP are lots better with future proof. ADSL/ADSL2+ are outdated now. Same goes for G.fast.
Will you be retiring your tbb username then? will it be fttpmax from now on?
Would you not want to go back to ADSL? LOL
May have been slower, but the internet was better then.
The one advantage of ADSL was not hogging the phone and my Mum saying that my phone was always engaged. Mobile phones were still expensive to call from a home phone.
The technology within which you are using to connect to the internet doesn’t dictate the “quality” of the internet. What a bizarre comparison.
I can imagine Openreach will be keen to start removing DSLAMs which are now 20+ years old and with low usage. Will probably also simplify the networking in the exchanges
The goal is total closure of about 5,000 out of 6,000 exchanges. Removal of ADSL is just one necessary step in that direction.
VDSL (FTTC/SOGEA) will take a lot longer to close, while there remain properties with only copper available. We have yet to see whether that will involve an FTTP mop-up programme, or moving remaining users onto 5G or satellite, or simply leaving bits of copper network indefinitely; I would guess a combination. That’s probably 10 years down the road at least.
The exchange DSLAMs don’t belong to Openreach, but most of them are already decommissioned
I remember when I first had ADSL, and the engineer showed me a photo downloading and the speed it was going was astonishing compared to dial up. I remember the old Frog modem, I expect it is still here in the loft.
We could have had better ion those days, but UK, behind as normal.
What could we have had that was better?
GPON as a standard was defined after the rollout of ADSL had begun and significant installations didn’t begin anywhere in the world until about 2007/8. Five years later.
Earlier optical networks could deliver 2Mbps max and customers on the trial networks for those ended up having the fibre replaced wit copper because ADSL was quicker.
So what could the UK have had that was better in 2003? Be specific.
We could have had FTTP WAY before the 2000’s as we were at the forefront of developing fibre communications. The Conservative government at the time saw this as creating a monopoly and banned BT from developing it. They sold it all off to the far east.
Early 90s B-ISDN, STM-1 or STM-4 per split. ATM transport.
ATM-PON/APON standardised in the late 1990s which evolved into BPON standardised in 2001.
Both could run at either STM-1 or STM-4 up and down with BPON usually deployed at 622 down, 155.5 up, similar optics, but higher overhead on the APON as ATM cells were transport.
Major BPON deployments include NTT and Verizon.
You’re welcome.
B-ISDN never existed as a deployed technology. Neither did BPON as an FTTH solution unless you had customers willing to £8k installation fees. The closest we got was TPON which maxed out at 2Mbps for a small number of customers.
BPON was widely deployed in the US during the initial Verizon FiOS rollout and customers certainly were not paying thousands to have it installed. It wasn’t that long ago, in the 2010s, that VZ were cajoling people with prehistoric BPON ONTs to upgrade to GPON.
My understanding is that TPON was essentially a proto-FTTC (ie copper to homes) and was geared towards telephony, at least in the way BT deployed it, in 90s housing estates where it was felt that it was a better solution than running in hundreds of E-side copper pairs. All well and good until people wanted ADSL or an LLU service and needed that copper after all.
I guess you didn’t believe me that major BPON deployments included NTT and Verizon. NTT started trials of BPON in 2000, followed by NTT East and West releasing it as a product to business and residential customers in 2001.
https://www.ntt-east.co.jp/release_e/0109/010903b.html
https://www.ntt-west.co.jp/news_e/0106/010628.html
Not going to go back and look at historic exchange rates but pretty confident 27,100JPY wasn’t £8k.
On B-ISDN your exact question was: ‘So what could the UK have had that was better in 2003? Be specific.’. Had the UK gone full fibre B-ISDN may have been a solution but APON or BPON absolutely would’ve been: millions of premises had BPON available in 2002.
On the 2 Mbit over fibre that was due to TPON. If you start thinking about it as ISDN over fibre it starts making more sense. Each subscriber of the 128 on the split by default got a Basic Rate ISDN service, 2 x 64k bearers, 16k data control channel. The capacity of primary rate ISDN, 30 x 64k bearers, 64k data control is… 2 Mbit. That was about it, PRI instead of BRI. Wasn’t that much TPON out there, no business case to re-engineer the TPON to a BPON network especially given the bunch of regulatory complications it would’ve triggered. All about the kit either side more than the fibre itself.
Hope this helps!
I hear SpaceX will join the field
Did the spacex crashed to the moon yesterday?