New research from GeoAnalysis has reported that nearly 6m UK homes and businesses will not be able to receive future broadband speeds (8Mbps+), while others still have problems being able to achieve even 2Mbps:

The firm said this divide is due to the geographic limitations of the two main platforms for delivering broadband - cable broadband and DSL.

Cable broadband is only available to around 55% of UK addresses. DSL is only able to deliver higher bandwidths to addresses close to the exchange.

These higher bandwidths are required to deliver the next generation of broadband applications, such as IPTV which requires at least 8MB to deliver an acceptable quality of service, with the emerging HDTV platform requiring even higher bandwidths.

Unfortunately this problem is nothing new and the impact can already be seen with people complaining about the speeds received when signing up to 8Mbps+ packages.

The concern is that, while Internet based content grows in size and complexity, a significant portion of the UK will be left unable to benefit due to limited delivery speeds.

Modern broadband has gone beyond 512Kbps and future services will require a lot faster speeds, it's time to look beyond xDSL. More @ netimpative.com .