The government's Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office, which seeks to ensure that 90% of "people in each local authority area" can access a superfast broadband (25Mbps) ISP service by 2015, today informed ISPreview.co.uk that it has finally corrected a crucial error which caused some mainstream media reports to incorrectly state the wrong speed target.

Until earlier this week BDUK's "glossary of terms" page had defined Superfast Broadband as being any service that could deliver a "headline access speed of at least 20Mbps", which is despite the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, setting the bar for above 24Mbps (aka - 25Mbps) in May 2011.


Naturally we raised this point with BDUK a few weeks back and were finally told yesterday afternoon that a "new version of the document with an updated glossary will be published soon". It went live today. About time too.


Many people regard this as a crucial distinction because any definition of 20Mbps+ would effectively allow older / existing (e.g. ADSL2+ ) broadband technologies to claim "superfast" status (i.e. job done, without public funding), although some ISPs have in fact used that marketing term since the dialup days (see our article - 'Definition of UK Superfast Next Generation Broadband').

UPDATE 22nd September 2011

Despite the change we still think that saying "a potential headline access speed of at least 24Mbps" would allow for ADSL2+ technology and contradicts what Jeremy Hunt and Ed Vaizey both said in various speeches about requiring "greater than 24Mbps".

We have proposed that BDUK adjust this line to read as follows:

"a potential headline access speed of greater than 24Mbps"

or

"at least 25Mbps"

Awaiting their reply.