Broadband ISP supplier Entanet and BT has officially made available a new technology that will allow its resale and wholesale vISP partners to offer faster internet upload speeds. The geeky sounding Annex M technology runs over BT's 21st Century Network (Wholesale Broadband Connect) and trades off some download speed from existing up to 24Mbps (ADSL2+) connections in order to boost upload performance.

Normal ADSL2+ lines can deliver upload rates of up to 1.4Mbps, although Annex M is often able to push this even further to 2.5Mbps. It also guarantees an upstream throughput of 85% of the upstream sync rate between the hours of 8am and 5pm Monday to Friday, excluding UK public and bank holidays.

Mirroring the BT WBC ADSL2+ footprint, Annex M is already available from exchanges serving 55% of UK homes and businesses and BT Wholesale intends to extend its WBC rollout to 75% by spring 2011. It is a rate adaptive product that will synchronise up to the highest upstream line rate possible.


We should point out that Entanet are not alone, several UK ISPs and vISP suppliers have been conducting similar trials of BT's Annex M upgrade and are expected to follow suit. Entanet will offer the service for an additional monthly fee (BT itself pegs the figure at £7.00 per end user, per month); sounds more expensive than some unbundled ( LLU ) ISPs offer it.

The WBC standard end user rental is £5.88 per end user per month and with the Annex M option this comes to £12.88 per end user, per month. It is priced in line with the latest WBC Fibre-to-the-Cabinet ( FTTC ) option - the standard fibre service (40Mbit/s downstream + 2Mbit/s upstream) rental is £13 per end user, per month.


Furthermore there isn't just the trade off in download speed to consider. Annex M is only really viable for lines with an attenuation of less than 45db. Longer lines are likely to only gain a minimal upstream benefit compared to the amount lost in terms of downstream speed. This makes it even more important to be aware of your routers line stats.