BT Wholesale has today announced its intention to extend the availability of their existing 'up to' 20Mbps ADSL2+ copper line based broadband ISP services (i.e. WBC - Wholesale Broadband Connect) to 80% of UK homes and businesses by the end of 2011 (20 million premises). The previous goal was 75% by Spring 2011.

At present ADSL2+, which BT rather perplexingly still calls a "next generation" service (its been around in the UK since 2004/5), is enabled at 1017 telephone exchanges around the country and serves 15.5 Million end-user premises.

In addition, BT today announced that it has reached 1,000 live fibre Ethernet nodes in the UK. It further claims to have the largest customer-ready copper and fibre delivered network of Ethernet in the UK market, with plans to reach 1,090 fibre nodes by the end of 2011.


So far 2.25 million UK customers have taken BT's WBC product, with 30k more lines being added each week. However, despite the headline speeds, WBC's ADSL2+ service is also known for delivering significantly slower speeds than those advertised by ISPs (an average of 6.2Mbps, according to Ofcom). This is often due to the physical limits of existing copper phone lines, especially when run over long distances, and issues with poor home wiring.

Meanwhile BT's new 'up to' 40Mbps FTTC service, which is much more deserving of the "next generation" tag than ADSL2+, is now available to over 4 million homes and businesses in the UK. BT is currently spending £2.5bn to bring its superfast services within reach of 40% by 2012 and then 66% by 2015.