BT today announced the introduction of its new 'Wholesale Broadband Connect' (WBC) family of services to ISPs in the UK. Running over the operators 21st Century Network (21CN) platform, WBC will allow providers to offer ADSL2+ based broadband packages, which are theoretically capable of delivering speeds at 'up to' 24Mbps.

It will initially be available from exchanges serving around one million homes and businesses. The service will progressively roll out across the country, rising to a potential footprint of 10 million homes and businesses by the spring of 2009 (868 telephone exchanges):


However, as we reported at the end of last week (original news), most consumers will still need to wait at least a couple of months before BT based ISPs begin offering packages based off the new service.

Long installation lead times and the need for some providers to trial the new service first will slow its adoption. In addition the new service is still susceptible to the same ADSL problems of line length, interference and ISP congestion. Due to this the actual speed received is unlikely to be very close to the headline rate of 24Mbps.

BT is expected to update their availability checker with estimated WBC speeds in due course:
http://www.btwholesale.com/adslchecker