BT Wholesale has quietly begun offering ISP's the ability to speed boost their broadband subscribers, hence the recent news from various ISP's. Keith has learnt that Pipex is another provider looking to follow suit.

While asking their press office about the matter, the ISP stated to us: "PIPEX, like all major ISPs, will be ensuring that its customers are able to take advantage of the speed improvements that BT are making on their network and shall be announcing details very soon."

The comment may be generalised, although it's probably safe to assume that they intend to follow suit. We've also learnt that further providers are looking at this as well.

Interestingly the speed boost promotion offered by BT isn't being treated by all ISP's as a "must have" improvement. This could be because of concerns over network stress, business models or even the irritating £5 +vat per user (use to be £11) charged to ISP’s for doing it.

On top of this, not all customers will be able to have speeds above 512Kbps, making some providers concerned about a ‘segregated’ subscriber base. Expect a few more providers to follow suit, if perhaps not a massive onslaught as has been seen with other offers.