Telecoms analyst Point Topic has estimated that Britain (UK) will be home to more than 10.5 million superfast broadband ISP lines by the end of 2016 and 60% of broadband customers (half of all homes and businesses) will be downloading with speeds of 30Mbps (Megabits per second) or more by the same date; rising to 100Mbps by 2021.

But the firm admits that its forecast is both "risky and controversial" due to uncertainty about the technology and the market. A number of European Telco's are said to have been using Fibre-to-the-Cabinet ( FTTC ) for years, which currently dominates BT's UK rollout ( BT-Infinity ), and Point Topic claims that many have found it both hard to deploy and to connect customers economically.



The news comes a day after BT announced that it was to speed up their rollout of related superfast broadband services, which would now complete by the end of 2014 instead of 2015 (here). By then BT expects to have at least 66% of the UK connected up to its 'up to' 80Mbps FTTC and 'up to' 300Mbps FTTP solutions.

Meanwhile Virgin Media can already reach half of the country with their 50Mbps service and the same will become true of their 100Mbps services by the middle of next year (2012). However mass market adoption of both will only occur if prices fall to levels that are more competitive with existing DSL (ADSL2+ etc.) solutions, which is easier said than done.