ADSLGuide has pointed out today's Ofcom review of BT and Kingston's Universal Service Obligation's (USO). In it there's a small piece about "Provision of connection at speeds that permit functional Internet access". Broadband also remains excluded.

To date Ofcom has disappointingly held the line that "users should be able to expect connection speeds of at least 28.8 kbit/s" (we don't consider that 'functional'). Sadly the regulator has chosen to keep this cap in place:

The Guidelines have been beneficial and Ofcom has concluded that no significant changes are needed at this time. In particular, the benchmark minimum speed will remain at 28.8 kbit/s.

It should be pointed out that BT actually supports speeds of up to around 33/36Kbps. In reality, physically being able to guarantee delivery of anything over 40Kbps tends to meet with numerous technically difficulties. Thank god for broadband.