Believe it or not Centillium, which only recently managed to push 20Mbps down an ordinary ADSL copper network (not unlike BTs), has now achieved a top speed of 50Mbps!

The technology, which is known as eXtremeDSLMAX, is backwards compatible and has a top upstream speed of 3Mbps. The maximum range of the kit is 7km, yet it's not clear how stable the speed is for that distance.

Sadly this is all just experimentation and the Internet simply isn't ready for such power, yet. Don't expect to see 50Mbps ADSL hardware anytime soon =). It certainly casts a shadow over the much predicted uptake of 'fibre' networks.