West Sussex County Council has signed a £20m deal with BT. Fibre broadband will be rolled out to about 98% of West Sussex homes and businesses by the start of spring 2016.

BT is contributing £7.6m towards the overall cost of deployment while West Sussex County Council is contributing £6.26m. £6.26m is also coming from the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) funds.

For further information, visit the West Sussex County Council website.

BT has signed a contract for £28.5 million to provide high-speed fibre broadband to around 96% of Cheshire homes and businesses by the end of 2016.

BT is contributing £9m while The Connecting Cheshire Partnership is contributing £1.85m, with a further £4m coming from the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) funds and £13.6m from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

The initial survey work will take around eight months, so Connecting Cheshire should be in a position to announce which communities will be included in the first stage of the roll-out around December 2013.

For more information, visit the Connecting Cheshire website by clicking on the link below:

Connecting Cheshire website

Digital Durham and BT has signed a £24 million contract to bring high-speed fibre broadband to County Durham, Gateshead, Sunderland and Tees Valley.

Digital Durham – a partnership of eight local authorities – has agreed a deal with BT to deliver high-speed fibre broadband to around 94% of premises by the end of 2016.

BT will make a financial contribution of £5.9 million financial contribution, with further contributions of £7.8 million from Durham County Council & Gateshead, £9.1 million from Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) and a £1.3 million contribution from public sector partners in Sunderland and Tees Valley.

Don’t forget to visit our Superfast Broadband in the UK page for information on superfast broadband projects across the UK.

Vectoring could allow BT to achieve 100Mbps download and 40Mbps upload speeds

While BT’s Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC service) currently offers download speeds of up to 76Mbps, many premises generally get speeds significantly lower than this. Vectoring is an advanced digital signal processing technology that would enable BT to deliver speeds of 100Mbps (and above) to a substantial number of premises. BT will test vectoring in summer 2013.

While FTTC is often cheaper than FTTP to deploy, proponents of FTTP (and critics of FTTC) are often keen to point out that the biggest weakness of FTTC is its dependence on copper cables. FTTC service rely on copper cables to carry broadband signals between premises and the street cabinet and these signals are susceptible to:

• signal attenuation (resulting in decreasing speeds the further premises are from the street cabinet)
• crosstalk, which is interference caused from broadband signals in surrounding cables.

Currently, BT’s FTTC service offers download speeds up to 76Mbps, and yet only a proportion of premises are able to achieve the maximum speed.

As described in our recent blog post Chart of BT FTTC (VDSL2) speed against distance from the cabinet, the speed achieved by FTTC generally falls with distance from the street cabinet. Crosstalk introduces a degree of uncertainty in speeds since some copper cables may be subject to increased interference from other cables.

Vectoring will significantly improve download speeds, allowing BT to deliver 100Mbps downloads at up to 500m from the street cabinet

The term ‘vectoring’ refers to advanced digital signal processing aimed at cancelling crosstalk interference to significantly improve performance and provide much more consistent speeds. Vectoring is being strongly promoted by manufacturers of FTTC equipment, such as Alcatel-Lucent. Here is a video from Alcatel Lucent that is targeted at operators such as BT:

Without vectoring, VDSL2 has the potential of delivering 100Mbps speeds but not at any practical distance from the street cabinet. Currently, BT limits the maximum speeds to 76Mbps as very few would be able to benefit from higher speeds without vectoring.

In September 2012, Dr Stefaan Vanhastel and Jan Verlinden of Alcatel-Lucent published the results of customer trials, in its article VDSL2 Vectoring Delivers on Its Promise. The authors claimed that 17 VDSL2 vectoring trials demonstrated that 100Mbps is achievable over copper at 400m – and even up to 500m – from the street cabinet. Their results suggest that vectoring could allow BT to increase its maximum FTTC data rate to 100Mbps and confidently deliver this date rate to a substantial proportion of users.

In addition to overall broadband speed increases, vectoring allows the speed variations achieved with FTTC to be significantly evened out. For example, in a particular Alcatel-Lucent test, downstream bit rates exhibited a significant spread – from 57Mbps to 88Mbps – at a distance of 350m from the street cabinet. With vectoring, all lines consistently reached download speeds of between 101Mbps and 107Mbps.

Vectoring significantly improves upload too, and could allow BT to offer upstream speeds of up to 40Mbps

Vectoring is also able to successfully cancel crosstalk interference in the upstream direction. Without vectoring, FTTC systems generally reduce the transmit powers from users close to the street cabinet so that they don’t interfere with weaker signals from premises further away. By cancelling crosstalk interference, vectoring allows transmit powers to be increased enabling maximum upstream data rates to be substantially increased.

Currently, BT’s FTTC service offers upstream data rates up to 19Mbps. Vectoring could allow BT to offer upstream data rates of 30–40Mbps.

BT will test vectoring during summer 2013

BT Openreach is planning to test vectoring during summer 2013. This will help it to decide if, and when, it will implement vectoring in its FTTC network.

On 17th April 2013, Northumberland County Council and BT announced an £18.9 million deal to roll out high-speed fibre broadband to 95% of homes and businesses in the county by January 2016.

91% of Northumberland homes and businesses will have access to superfast speeds. A further 4% of the county will also benefit from a significant improvement in speeds of up to 25Mbps via the fibre network.

Towards the end of the project, BT will also look to work with communities in the final five per cent to see if fibre can be extended further through innovative collaborative projects.

BT is contributing £2.9 million towards the fibre deployment with Northumberland County Council investing £7 million plus its £7 million share of BDUK funds. The remaining £2 million is coming from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

The first premises are currently expected to be connected in January 2014.

Information on the project and roll-out can be found on the following site:

www.inorthumberland.org.uk

Today, BT announced it has passed more than 15 million premises with its fibre broadband network, meaning more than half of UK homes and businesses can now access high-speed fibre broadband services.

BT claims that its commercial £2.5 billion fibre programme is about 18 months ahead of its original schedule, and is on course to pass about 19 million premises by the end of spring 2014.

As shown in our figure below, BT has been making excellent progress with its commercial roll-out programme, with a noticeable uplift in the last quarter, and looks to be on course to reach 19 million premises (which equates to about 66% of UK premises by the end of March 2014) – which would actually be ahead of its latest accelerated plans.

 
Historical and predicted fibre broadband availability from BT’s £2.5bn commercial deployment

It is important to note that, as well as deploying fibre as part of its commercial roll out, BT is also working with councils and local authorities to take fibre to areas outside the private sector’s current and projected footprint. BT has already signed 18 BDUK contracts and hopes to sign further BDUK-related deals in the coming months. These additional deployments are not included in the fibre availability chart above. We believe that these projects will increase the availability of high-speed fibre broadband to 90% (or even more) of UK premises by the end of 2015.

The UK Government’s aspiration is that superfast broadband (defined as delivering in excess of 24Mbps) should be available to 90% of UK premises by 2015, as described in our UK superfast broadband page. Typically, the availability of fibre broadband in local authority projects will be significantly greater than the superfast broadband percentages (since some premises with fibre will not have speeds of 24Mbps or more). For example, Cambridgeshire County Council is targeting at least 90% of premises with superfast speeds but plans for 98% of premises having access to fibre broadband.

So, within less than three years, the vast majority of premises will have access to fibre broadband. While the progress on fibre infrastructure roll-out looks very promising, statistics on the actual take-up of fibre services are less positive, although it is still early days for superfast broadband.

As shown in the chart below, take-up of BT fibre broadband has been increasing. In its results for the quarter to the end of December 2012, BT reported that take-up is “growing strongly” with around 1.25 million homes having access to fibre broadband services. However, this still equates to less than 10% of the 13 million homes that could access fibre broadband.

Take-up of BT fibre broadband in the UK

Now that extensive roll-out of fibre broadband is well underway, we believe that should be an increased focus on demand stimulation for superfast broadband services. Availability is not enough and, ultimately, adoption is a much more important measure of success. From the perspective of the UK Government and local authorities, the greater the take-up of BT fibre broadband services, the stronger the commercial case for fibre broadband deployment becomes without the need for public investment.

We believe that too many people in areas already covered by fibre broadband are:

• unaware of what fibre broadband is and what the benefits of superfast broadband are
• unaware that fibre broadband services are already available in their area
• unaware that the price premium for fibre services compared with conventional broadband is already relatively low.

 To address these, we have developed a range of information pages on this website.

Our page What is fibre broadband? FTTC and FTTP explained comprehensively explains what fibre broadband is, with videos from BT Openreach.

Our page Why you need superfast broadband describes the benefits of superfast broadband services for both consumers and businesses.

Our page Superfast broadband provides information about BT’s commercial fibre roll-out as well as information about all of the local authority projects across the UK aimed at bringing superfast broadband to rural areas. This will enable you to understand if and when you will be able to access fibre broadband.

Many broadband users make the assumption that superfast broadband services are considerably more expensive than conventional broadband. However, this is not the case, as found by Ofcom in its recent report.

To understand if you can get fibre broadband – and get the very best deal from BT Broadband (currently the largest ISP in the UK) – click on the link below and enter your telephone number.

As described in our What is fibre broadband – Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) and Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) explained page, FTTC still makes use of copper wires between the premises and the street cabinet. However, a new technology called VDSL2 (Very-high-bit-rate Digital Subscriber Line 2) is used to carry the broadband signals over the copper wires. This is because VDSL2 can provide much higher data rates close to a street cabinet than previous ADSL2+ and ADSL technologies could.

First let’s consider the absolute maximum speeds that can be delivered by the BT FTTC service.

To provide flexibility for telecoms operators worldwide, a number of so-called VDSL2 profiles have been defined, which differ in the width of the frequency band used to transmit the broadband signal. Profile examples are shown in the table, below. Profiles that use a wider frequency band can deliver higher maximum speeds. Operators can choose to cap the maximum speed.

 VDSL profiles

When BT first launched its first FTTC service, profile 8a was adopted and BT capped the maximum download rate at 38Mbps. In April 2012, BT implemented the 17a profile (using more than twice the original bandwidth) and capped the maximum download speed to 76Mbps. This is currently the highest speed offered.

Just as the data rates of conventional (ADSL and ADSL2/2+) broadband fall as the distance from the exchange increases (as explained in our Chart of ADSL and ADSL2+ speed versus distance article), so the speeds of FTTC fall as the distance from the street cabinet increases.

The chart below shows the expected connection speed of BT’s FTTC service for different distances from the street cabinet. For comparison, the speeds that would have been achieved by ADSL2+ are also shown.

 Chart of BT FTTC speed against distance from the street cabinet

Broadband users within about 300m of the street cabinet can expect to achieve about the maximum possible speeds (i.e. around 76Mbps). Speeds fall to about 60Mbps when 500m away from the street cabinet and, at 1km, about 28Mbps connection speed can be achieved. From about 1.6km, the performance of VDSL2 is equal to that of ADSL2+, making VDSL2 suitable for carrying broadband over long distances.

In the future, there are likely to be further speed improvements made to BT’s FTTC service. Firstly, adoption of the 30a VDSL2 profile (using a wide 30MHz bandwidth) could deliver maximum speeds well above 100Mbps, although this would mainly benefit premises located close to the street cabinet. Secondly, an advanced technology called ‘VDSL2 vectoring’ could be applied, which is a noise cancellation technology designed to reduce crosstalk interference on copper cables.

While FTTC speeds are likely to improve over time, FTTC will never match the performance obtained by FTTP due to the limitations of copper cables.

A £24.6 million deal has been signed with BT to bring superfast broadband to Shropshire. BT is contributing £8.6m towards the deployment, while Shropshire Council is contributing £8.2m, with £7.84m coming from the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) funds.

Fibre broadband  – offering speeds up to 80Mbps – will be available to 93% of premises across Shropshire by the end of spring 2016.

For more information, visit the Connecting Shropshire website by clicking on the following link:

Connecting Shropshire website

To track developments of superfast broadband across the UK, visit our Superfast broadband in the UK page.

Hampshire County Council has today signed a contract with BT to build on the existing commercial footprint in the county so that at least 90% of all premises will have access to superfast broadband by the end of 2015.

Hampshire County Council together with district and borough partners has invested £5 million in the project and were awarded the same figure from BDUK. BT is contributing an additional £3.8 million towards the cost of installing the new fibre infrastructure bringing the total investment in the project to just over £13.8 million.

The first communities to benefit from this project are expected to have access to fibre broadband by the end of 2013, with the programme due to be completed by the end of 2015.

For more information view the Hampshire County Council website below:

Hampshire County Council website

To track developments of superfast broadband across the UK, visit our Superfast broadband in the UK page.

Kent County Council has signed a £39.47m contract with BT to supply high-speed fibre broadband across Kent. At least 95% of properties in Kent will have access to higher-speed fibre broadband by the end of 2015 (with 91% having access to superfast speeds of 24Mbps and above) – and every property in the project area able to access download speeds of at least 2Mbps.

The project is backed by £10m of council funding, £9.87m from central government (BD UK) and £19.6m from BT. 

For more information, view the video below:

To track developments of superfast broadband across the UK, visit our Superfast broadband in the UK page.

Northamptonshire County Council has signed a contract with BT to provide superfast broadband services across the county. 91% of premises across the county are expected to be connected to fibre broadband by September 2015 of which 90% can expect to have access to speeds of more than 24Mbps.  The project total of £16.2 million includes an £8.1 million contribution from BT. Northamptonshire County Council eventually hopes to get superfast broadband services (offering at least 30Mbps) to 100% of premises in Northamptonshire by March 2017.

The cabinet meeting minutes can be viewed by clicking on the link below:

Superfast broadband meeting minutes for Northamptonshire County Council

To track developments of superfast broadband across the UK, visit our Superfast broadband in the UK page.

Today, Ofcom published its latest report on UK broadband speeds. As of November 2012, the average actual download speed of a UK fixed broadband connection was 12.0Mbps. This is 3.1Mbps (34%) higher than the 9.0Mbps average recorded in May 2012, and 8.4Mbps (234%) faster than the 3.6Mbps average in November 2008. The migration to higher-speed packages (e.g. fibre broadband)  is a key driver behind increasing average UK broadband speeds.

The proportion of UK residential fixed-line broadband connections that were superfast more than doubled in the year to November 2012. The proportion of residential fixed broadband connections that were superfast increased from 5% to 13%, in the year to November 2012. The average speed recorded for superfast services in November 2012 was 44.6Mbps.

In its report, Ofcom noted that the difference between the monthly rental fees for ISPs’ lowest-cost ‘superfast’ services and their lowest-cost ‘current generation’ services is often relatively small, with the price differential ranging from 5 to 10 pounds a month for most ISPs that offer both types of service.

You can read the Ofcom report by clicking on the following link:

UK Fixed-Line Broadband Performance, Ofcom Report, November 2012

Lincolnshire County Council has signed a contract with BT to provide fibre-based broadband so that at least 88% of premises will have access to superfast broadband by April 2016. At least 94% of premises should have access to fibre broadband by April 2016.

The project will utilise £48 million of public and private funding, with £18.8 million coming from BT and £14.3 million from the BDUK fund. The first connections delivered by the project are expected in January 2014.

 For more information, view the onlincolnshire website.

Lincolnshire County Council’s onlincolnshire team commissioned the video below to demonstrate the potential of superfast broadband infrastructure in Lincolnshire.

To track developments of superfast broadband across the UK, visit our Superfast broadband in the UK page.

Superfast Cornwall, a partnership between the European Union, BT and Cornwall Council was launched in 2010. Using up to £78.5 million from BT and up to £53.5 million from the European Regional Development Fund, the £132 million programme’s initial aim was to make fibre broadband available to at least 80 per cent of Cornish homes and businesses by the end of 2014.

As a result of cost efficiencies achieved by BT since the programme began, the Superfast Cornwall project has announced a modified target to make fibre broadband available to 95% of Cornish homes and businesses by the end of 2014.

For more information about the Superfast Cornwall project, click on the following link:

Superfast Cornwall website

The video below introduces the Superfast Cornwall project:

To track developments of superfast broadband across the UK, visit our Superfast broadband in the UK page.

Good news for people living in Peterborough and Cambridgeshire. On March 8th 2013, Cambridgeshire County Council signed a contract with BT to bring fibre-based broadband to 98% of homes and businesses in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough by the end of 2015.

Superfast speeds of at least 24Mbps will be available to more than 90% of premises, with a minimum of 2Mbps to virtually all premises over the next three years.

Completion of the roll out under the contract will mean that 98% of homes and businesses across the county can expect to have access to fibre-based broadband by the end of 2015.

Without the intervention of the Connecting Cambridgeshire programme around a third of premises would not have been able to access faster broadband services.

BT will contribute £16 million to the £45 million project with the rest of the investment coming from Cambridgeshire County Council, Peterborough City Council and Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK).

Work on the project will start immediately with the first locations expected to get fibre later in 2013. The three-year roll out will begin with a period of planning and detailed surveying, before BT Openreach starts work on the ground. The project will involve enabling over 100 telephone exchanges and many more street cabinets.

For more information, view the superfast broadband in Cambridgeshire page or the Connecting Cambridgeshire website.

To track developments of superfast broadband across the UK, visit our Superfast broadband in the UK page.

On 30th January 2013, Wiltshire Council in partnership with South Gloucestershire Council awarded a contract to BT to provide superfast broadband.

91% of all premises will be able to access superfast broadband (with speeds greater than 24Mbps) by March 2016.

The total investment is £35.6m, with £4.6m from BDUK, £2m from South Gloucestershire Council, £15.5m from Wiltshire Council, £12.8m from BT and £0.74m from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

The first exchanges enabled under the project are expected to go live with fibre in spring 2014.

The video below was produced by South Gloucestershire Council Strategic Communications Team:

To track developments of superfast broadband across the UK, visit our Superfast broadband in the UK page.

On the 29th January 2013, Connecting Devon and Somerset agreed a deal with BT to deliver high-speed fibre broadband to around 90% of premises by the end of 2016 and to ensure a minimum of 2Mbps broadband speeds for all.

Average speeds are currently around 9Mbps in Devon and around 8Mbps in Somerset, while about 14% of premises across the two counties receive less than 2Mbps.

The total value of the contract is £94 million, with BT making a £41 million financial contribution. £10 million is being provided each from Devon and Somerset County Councils with £32 million Government funding from Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) and contributions from other public sector partners.

For more information, click on the following link:

Connecting Devon and Somerset website

To track developments of superfast broadband across the UK, visit our Superfast broadband in the UK page.

On December 21st 2012, Suffolk County Council signed a £40m contract with BT for superfast broadband. Around 9 out of 10 (i.e. 90% of) Suffolk properties will be able to access fibre-based broadband by the end of 2015. Over 80% of properties will have access to superfast coverage with speeds of 24Mbps or more.

Only 2% of the hardest-to-reach premises are expected to have speeds of less than 5Mbps.

The total contract value is £40m, with contribution from BT (£16m) and BDUK (£11.68m).

To track developments of superfast broadband across the UK, visit our Superfast broadband in the UK page.

On Friday 21st December 2012, a deal was signed between Norfolk County Council and BT to bring superfast broadband to homes and businesses in Norfolk.

Over 80% of Norfolk’s homes and businesses are expected to be able to access superfast broadband services (24Mbps and above) by autumn 2015.

Total investment in the project is £41m, with contributions from BT (£11m), Norfolk County Council (£15m) and BDUK (£15m).

To track developments of superfast broadband across the UK, visit our Superfast broadband in the UK page.

Hereford and Gloucestershire became the first counties to launch a joint bid to bring fibre to rural areas. 9 in 10 homes and businesses will have access to fibre. The project will be completed by the end of 2016. The project value is £56.6m, with contributions from BDUK (£18.17m), BT (£20.9m), Herefordshire Council (£10.1m) and Gloucestershire Council (£7.5m).

 To track developments of superfast broadband across the UK, visit our Superfast broadband in the UK page.

In areas where superfast broadband is not available, telecom suppliers often point businesses in need of reliable high-speed Internet access towards leased lines, particularly in areas where superfast broadband is not available. However, leased lines can be very expensive and bonded ADSL can now provide a much cheaper alternative.

A leased line is a dedicated connection, which (unlike a typical broadband connection) is not shared by any other user. Leased lines have, at face value, a number of benefits, notably:

• guaranteed high-speed Internet access (with speeds up to 1Gbps, or above)

• unlimited data usage (although many businesses – particularly smaller ones – may not need this)

• the same bandwidth available in both directions

• no contention. As a leased line is not shared, it delivers a dedicated guaranteed bandwidth

• service level agreements.

The major downside of a leased line is cost. The initial installation cost of a leased line (typically thousands of pounds) generally varies according to the distance between the ISP’s Point of Presence (POP) and the physical location of the customer and the nature of the terrain between these two points. In order to avoid putting off customers, most leased line providers amortize all or part of the initial installation cost over the contract period (and typically specify minimum contract periods of several years). For example, BT offers free connection for leased lines with three and five year contracts.

Despite leased lines being available from a number of telecom providers (such as BT, Virgin and TalkTalk Business), the monthly cost of a leased line is substantially greater than an ADSL line. Monthly costs vary significantly according to user location and speed required, and can typically vary between £400 and £2000 per month. The lowest monthly costs are associated with the slowest leased line speeds (2Mbps and 10Mbps). It is possible to choose leased lines offering fast speeds (for example, 100Mbps or even 1Gbps and above).

Given the cost of a leased line and the long minimum contract periods, we advise caution before signing up to a leased line. Careful consideration should be given to alternatives, particularly bonded ADSL. We have been particularly impressed by the Sharedband service, which we have comprehensively reviewed here and here. Sharedband effectively amalgamates the downlink (and uplink) bandwidth of two or more ADSL lines together (to substantially increase Internet speed) while improving service reliability (since service is not lost if a single line goes down). Maximum resilience is achieved through the use of ADSL lines from different suppliers.

As an example, with ADSL2 lines each offering a relatively modest 6Mbps (downlink) and 1Mbps (uplink), Sharedband would be able to deliver nearly 12Mbps (downlink) and 2Mbps (uplink) with two ADSL lines, and nearly 24Mbps (downlink) and 4Mbps (uplink) with four ADSL lines. Even with four ADSL lines, the cost would be cheaper than a leased line and without a long minimum time commitment.

For more information about the Sharedband service, or to order the service, please view the Sharedband website.

Cumbria County Council has signed a £51m contract with BT. Fibre broadband is set to become available to 93% of Cumbria homes and businesses by the end of 2015.

BT will contribute £15m to the project, with further contributions from BDUK (£17.1m), the European Regional Development Fund (£13.7m) and a Performance Reward Grant from all councils in Cumbria (£5m).

For more information, visit the following website:

www.connectingcumbria.org.uk

The video below describes the Connecting Cumbria project:

The video below was produced by Cumbria County Council. Local residents talk about their current broadband experiences.

To track developments of superfast broadband across the UK, visit our Superfast broadband in the UK page.

While ISPs often advertise ADSL2+ and ADSL services as having maximum downlink connection speeds of 24 Mbps and 8 Mbps, respectively, very few broadband users can expect to achieve such speeds. In general, the broadband signal from the exchange suffers attenuation as it travels along the cable from the exchange to your broadband modem, reducing the speeds that can be delivered.

ADSL2+ and ADSL signals pass along the cable connecting your modem to the BT mastersocket and then along the cable between your premises and your local BT street cabinet, which is connected to the BT exchange using another cable. With ADSL2+ and ADSL services, the broadband signal has to pass along all these cables. In general, the longer the total distance between your modem and the exchange, the more that signals are attenuated, as shown in the chart below.

Chart of ADSL2/2+ and ADSL connection speed against distance from the exchange

ADSL2+ provides most benefit for premises close to the exchange. For distances between 3km and 3.5km, where ADSL speeds have fallen well below 10Mbps, ADSL2+ and ADSL2 still provide worthwhile increases in connection speeds. There is very little difference in performance at distances above 4km.

To view an equivalent chart of downlink connection speed against line loss, please visit our article Chart of ADSL and ADSL2+ speed versus line loss.

The table below provides the chart data in more granular form. Note that the length of the cables between your location and the BT exchange may be considerably more than the direct distance between your location and the exchange ‘as the crow flies’. This is because the cable first travels to a street cabinet, and there may be a number of possible routes.

Relationship between line loss, line length and downlink connection speeds for ADSL2+ and ADSL

While ISPs often advertise ADSL2+ and ADSL services as having maximum downlink connection speeds of 24 Mbps and 8 Mbps, respectively, few broadband users will achieve such speeds. Broadband signals from the exchange suffer attenuation as they travels along the cable from the exchange to your broadband modem, reducing the speeds that can be delivered.

ADSL2+ and ADSL signals pass along the cable connecting your modem to the BT mastersocket and then along the cable between your premises and your local BT street cabinet, which is connected to the BT exchange using another cable. With ADSL2+ and ADSL services, the broadband signal has to pass along all these cables. In general, the longer the total distance between your modem and the exchange, the more that signals are attenuated. In general, the longer the total cable length between your modem and the BT exchange, the greater the so-called line loss (also known as line attenuation). This is measured in dB.

Most modems can display the measured line loss. Using this figure, you can estimate your connection speeds using the graph below, which we have derived from a number of sources, including our own measurements. Note that the graph assumes a SNR target margin of about 6 dB – which is the default initial setting for BT exchange equipment.

 Chart of ADSL2/2+ and ADSL connection speed and line loss

Visit our article Chart of ADSL and ADSL2+ speed versus distance for a corresponding chart of downlink connection speed against distance from the exchange.

As can be seen, ADSL2+ can provide substantially higher downlink connection speeds compared with ADSL for those lucky enough to live relatively close to the BT exchange. For line losses between 40 dB and 50 dB, ADSL2+ provides relatively modest performance gains over basic ADSL, although these are certainly worth having! ADSL2+ may not provide noticeable gains for line losses above 55 dB.

The table below provides the chart data in more granular form. Also included is an estimate for line length. Note that the length of the cables between your location and the BT exchange may be considerably more than the direct distance between your location and the exchange ‘as the crow flies’. This is because the cable first travels to a street cabinet, and there may be a number of possible routes.

Relationship between line loss, line length and downlink connection speeds for ADSL2+ and ADSL

While the cables between your premises and the street cabinet and between the street cabinet and the exchange are beyond your direct control, you can ensure that line loss is minimised through the use of a filtered faceplate and connecting your modem directly to the BT mastersocket, to maximise connection speeds.

As discussed in our SNR tweaking page, reducing the SNR target margin can be an effective way to significantly increase broadband speeds, particularly for those ‘stuck’ with a high target margin. The impact on downlink connection speed from a reduction in SNR target margin can be easily determined from the table above. Reducing SNR target margin by a given amount produces the same effect as reducing the line loss by the same amount. For example, if your current SNR target margin is 12 dB and you decrease this by 9 dB to 3 dB, this will provide a boost in downlink connection speed equivalent to a 9 dB reduction in line loss.

Don’t forget to read our Increase Broadband Speed Guide to get the most out of your broadband service.

Before spending any money, here is a quick, painless and completely free method to determine if a filtered faceplate will improve your broadband connection.

First, you should baseline your broadband connection, and determine the connection speed of your link. This is not the same as the speed shown by online speed tests. Read your modem manual on how to get this information. The reason why an online speed test is of no value is that it can take the exchange several hours or days to react to an improved line and increase actual throughput speeds. However, any line improvement should be reflected in the connection speed immediately. Please read our Increase Broadband Speed Guide, which explains the difference between connection speeds and throughputs.

Once you have determined your connection speed, find your BT mastersocket, which is where the cable from the BT exchange enters your property. It is a white box, as shown in the photo, with a BT or Openreach logo on it.

Closer examination will reveal that there is a faceplate screwed to the front bottom part of the box. You should remove the two front screws in order to detach the faceplate. Once unscrewed, the faceplate pulls off.

With the faceplate removed, the so-called ‘test socket’ should now visible. This just looks like the socket at the front of the faceplate. The only difference is that internal wiring in your property (for example, connecting extension phones) is actually connected to the faceplate. This internal wiring throughout your property can pick up interference, degrading your broadband signal.

With all your internal wiring disconnected, the test socket provides a clean connection to test the optimum performance of your broadband line.

All you need to do is to plug your modem directly into the test socket. Once the modem has reconnected to the exchange, make a note of the connection speed. If this has increased, then a filtered faceplate will definitely make a difference for you!

Our ADSL faceplate page gives links to where you can buy a high-quality filtered faceplate.

For those suffering from slow broadband speeds or unreliable service, superfast broadband could not come too soon, particularly for many rural users. This week, the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) said that up to a fifth of people in rural areas still do not have adequate broadband services. 

BT has previously announced that it intends to deploy superfast broadband to only about 66% of premises by 2014. Through its own funding, using the Broadband Delivery UK framework, the Government’s objective is that superfast broadband will be available to 90% of premises by 2015, with speeds of at least 2Mbps available to everyone. 

The CLA believes that the government is unlikely to meet its targets, potentially leaving rural communities without adequate broadband access. 

Using (and supplementing) funding from the Broadband Delivery UK framework, county councils have started to announce their superfast broadband contracts and plans.

You can track the progress of the local authority superfast broadband projects by visting our dedicated page:

Superfast broadband in the UK

Surrey County Council has signed a £32.8m contract with BT to deliver superfast broadband infrastructure across Surrey by the end of 2014. BT’s fibre network will be extended to reach 99.7% of homes and businesses in Surrey.

£20m is to be invested by Surrey County Council with a further £11.8m and £1.31m contributed by BT and the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme, respectively.

For more information, visit the following website:

www.superfastsurrey.org.uk

The website contains a postcode checker so that people in Surrey can see if they are included in the deployment plan and, if so, when they are likely to get fibre broadband.

In the video below, BT Managing Director of Next Generation Access, Bill Murphy, and Surrey County Council Deputy Leader Peter Martin set out plans for superfast broadband in Surrey.

To track developments of superfast broadband across the UK, visit our Superfast broadband in the UK page.

For those struggling with slow broadband speeds, there is hope on the horizon, although it will take until 2020 for superfast broadband to reach everyone in the UK. 

The European Commission has the target of achieving superfast broadband speeds of at least 30Mbps in every household in Europe by 2020, with 100Mbps achieved in 50% of households.

This month, UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced the intention to have the fastest broadband of any major European country by 2015, helped by three initiatives:

• ongoing Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) projects across the UK, aimed at achieving 90% coverage for superfast broadband services (defined as greater than 24Mbps)
• a £150 million urban broadband fund, targeting cities, which will give around 15% of the UK population access to speeds of between 80 and 120Mbps
• 4G mobile broadband roll-out, with one 4G licence requiring indoor coverage for 98% of the UK population.

 According to Jeremy Hunt, 43 out of 46 local authority areas now have broadband plans approved for delivering 90% or greater superfast broadband access. He expects procurement to be completed across the whole country by July 2013.

If the Government is successful at delivering speeds of greater than 24Mbps in 90% of premises by 2015, it will still take several years to reach 100%. For those unable to access superfast broadband services, it is vital to get the most out of existing basic broadband services.

To help, we have produced our Increase Broadband Speed guide.

You can track the progress of superfast broadband roll-out in the UK by visiting the following page:

Superfast broadband in the UK

By the end of 2015, 96% of homes and businesses in Wales are expected to be able to access high-speed fibre broadband as a result of a £425m project (when BT’s commercial investment in Wales is also taken into account). The very first premises are expected to go live by spring 2013.

Total public  sector investment is £205m, which includes £56.9m from BDUK, £89.5m from European ERDF funding and £58.6m from the Welsh Government. BT’s total commitment is £220m.

To track developments of superfast broadband across the UK, visit our Superfast broadband in the UK page.

North Yorkshire County Council has signed a contract with BT to provide superfast broadband. 90% of North Yorkshire homes and businesses will have access to fibre broadband (“typically” providing speeds of 25Mbps or more) by the end of 2014.

The total contract value is £36.44m, with contributions of £10m from BT and £17.84m from BDUK.

For more information, visit the following site:

www.superfastnorthyorkshire.com

The video below shows BT Openreach Chief Executive Liv Garfield’s message to the Broadband North Yorkshire Conference:

To track developments of superfast broadband across the UK, visit our Superfast broadband in the UK page.

Ofcom has published its 2012 Communications Market Report, and has identified strong growth in the adoption of Internet-enabled devices such as laptops, smartphones, tablets (including the iPad) and e-readers (including the Kindle). Each household in the UK now has on average three different types of Internet-enabled device.

Ownership of a laptop stood at 61% of households, ahead of a games console (52%), a desktop PCs (44%) and an Internet-enabled set-top box (41%).

Two-fifths of UK adults are now smartphone users. Take-up has risen from 27% in 2011 to 39% in Q1 2012. Over 4 in 10 smartphone users say their phone is more important for accessing the Internet than any other device. 39% of households claimed to access the Internet through their mobile phone.

Tablet ownership has risen rapidly in the past year, from 2% of UK households in Q1 2011 to 11% in Q1 2012. According to Ofcom, tablet computers are used on a regular basis, with 74% of tablet owners claiming to go online with their tablet every day, or most days.

10% of UK adults now have an e-reader, up from 3% in 2011.

The need to support multiple Internet-enabled devices is helping to drive the demand for superfast broadband services. There were 1.4 million UK superfast broadband connections at the end of March 2012 (representing 6.6% of all connections), 162% more than there had been a year previously.

60% of UK homes could receive superfast broadband services by March 2012. This is an increase of seven percentage points compared with the previous year.

You can view the full Ofcom report by clicking on the following link:

Ofcom Communications Market Report 2012

You can view the video of Ofcom’s Communications Market Report 2012 analyst briefing below, which took part on the 18th July 2012.

According to research carried out by TalkTalk, millions of UK homes are missing out from achieving the best possible speeds due to poor set up, which is what we have been saying for a long time!

TalkTalk engineers have performed 25,000 home visits and have identified many problems associated with set up.  TalkTalk claims that over half a million homes lose about 4Mbps of download speed due to poor set-up, and believes that a further 2.5m homes could increase their broadband speeds by making a few changes.

According to TalkTalk, the average home has a broadband speed of 7.6Mbps, so a loss of 4Mbps is a significant amount.

TalkTalk believes that most of the issues that they have identified can be solved quickly by broadband users themselves. We wholeheartedly agree, which is why we have produced our independent Increase Broadband Speed Guide.

The most common issues found by the TalkTalk engineers were:

• poor wiring (31%)
• router not set up correctly (20%)
• phone socket not set up properly (17%)
• a new ADSL broadband filter was required (14%)
• other problems, such as customers not connecting the router to the mastersocket directly (13%).

Interestingly, TalkTalk wants to encourage people to think of broadband in the same way as water and electricity, in that it is a resource that can go to waste if broadband users are not careful.

For our comprehensive guide on how to maximise your broadband speed, click on the following link:

Increase Broadband Speed Guide

If you suffer from low broadband speeds, you are not alone. According to a recent report from Akamai, the average UK download speed across all broadband users was 4.9Mbps in the final three months of 2011.

This compares with 17.5Mbps and 9.1Mbps in South Korea and Japan, respectively.

Akamai found that the UK ranked 16th in Europe for average measured connection speed, and 14th for average peak connection speed. 

According to Akamai, 9% of UK broadband users had average download speeds less than 2Mbps. Only 30% of UK broadband users had average download speeds of over 5Mbps.

The BBC’s iPlayer requires download speeds of at least 3.5Mbps to stream HD TV video content meaning that a significant number of UK broadband users are currently not be able to benefit from this service.

Rutland County Council has signed a £3.7m superfast broadband contract with BT. By the end of 2013, at least 90% of Rutland’s  homes and businesses will be able to access fibre broadband. BT will contribute £800,000 with £2.2m coming from Rutland County Council and £710,000 from BDUK.

To track developments of superfast broadband across the UK, visit our Superfast broadband in the UK page.

When you want to speed up your broadband, it can be somewhat depressing reading information about new superfast broadband services if they are currently not available in many areas. All is not lost! We present five tips on how to get the very best speeds from your Internet connection if you’re not lucky enough to be able to subscribe to superfast broadband services.

With recent announcements from Virgin Media and BT, you could be forgiven for thinking that almost everyone is able to access superfast broadband speeds. Early this year, Virgin Media announced plans to double the speeds for most of its four million broadband customers, offering download speeds up to 120Mbps. This month, BT announced that the maximum download speed of its Infinity superfast broadband service would be increased to 76Mbps (with upload speeds increased to 19Mbps).

Despite these impressive headline speeds, it’s important to realise that superfast broadband services are not available in many areas of the UK, so average broadband speeds are much lower. In its latest assessment of broadband speeds (published in February 2012), Ofcom found that the average broadband speed in the UK as a whole was 7.6Mbps. 

Even with significant Government funding, superfast broadband services will still not be available to at least 10% of the UK population even by early 2015, and this percentage could be much higher. Many of us will be ‘stuck’ with ADSL services, so we’ll have to make the most of them! In its February 2012 report, Ofcom found that ADSL-based connections continue to deliver average download speeds much lower than the headline ‘up to’ speeds (which are often used to advertise broadband services). ‘Up to’ 8Mbit/s and ‘up to’ 20/24Mbit/s ADSL connections delivered just 41% and 31% of headline speeds.

Here are five tips proven to speed up broadband:

Tip 1: Connect your modem/router to the BT mastersocket rather than using long extensions. Long extensions can increase noise and interference to your broadband signal, which can have a detrimental impact on broadband speed.

Tip 2: Fit a filtered ADSL faceplate. This can make a dramatic difference to broadband speeds and costs less than £10. The purpose of the filtered faceplate it to separate your broadband signal from the rest of the telephone wiring throughout your house. A filtered faceplate is very easy to fit. For more information, view our ADSL Faceplate page.

Tip 3: Select an ISP that doesn’t ‘traffic shape’. Many ISPs apply so-called ‘traffic shaping’ at peak times, intentionally reducing broadband speeds to avoid having to invest in broadband infrastructure (to cope with the peaks in traffic demand).  High-quality ISPs that do not traffic shape include Xilo. For more information, view our Which ISP? page.

Tip 4: Purchase a high-quality router/modem. There are significant differences in the extent to which broadband modems can maintain a connection, particularly with challenging or long lines. Routers such as the Billion 7800N have gained an excellent reputation among broadband users for extracting the best performance possible. For more information, visit our Which Broadband Router/Modem? page.

Tip 5: Tweak the target SNR margin. Some modems (including the Billion 7800N) allow you to tweak the target SNR margin, to significantly increase broadband speed. For example, changing the SNR target margin from 18dB to 1dB could increase download speeds by over 100%. For further information, read our SNR Tweak page.

If you are able to apply all five tips, you are likely to experience dramatic improvements in broadband performance. Good luck!

Lancashire County Council has agreed a £62.5m project with BT. Fibre will be extended to 97% of premises by the end of 2014.

BT will contribute £30m to the project while £10.8m will come from BDUK, with £16.5m from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and £5.2m from local councils.

For more information, visit the following website:

www.superfastlancashire.com

To track developments of superfast broadband across the UK, visit our Superfast broadband in the UK page.

According to new research from price comparison site uSwitch, a third of UK homes struggle to get broadband speeds greater than 5Mbps. Half of homes get broadband speeds of less than 6.7Mbps.

uSwitch has published the results of nearly 1.7 million speed tests carried out in the last six months. For broadband users that are currently unable to access superfast broadband services, the results make unsurprising, albeit depressing, reading. Average broadband speeds in five areas were below 1.5Mbps.

uSwitch were surprised to find that a number of towns and cities, including Carlisle and Hereford, suffering from poor broadband speeds. This dispels the view that only rural areas suffer from low broadband speeds. It’s a problem that can affect many households, wherever they are situated.

For those broadband users that are currently suffering poor speeds, there is a hope.

We have produced a free guide, which describes and explains tangible actions that you can take to increase broadband speeds, and they really do work. To access the guide, click on the link below.

Increase broadband speed guide

If you’re struggling with your broadband connection, or you would simply like to get the very best speeds and reliability from your broadband line, then the Increase Broadband Speed website and blog are for you. We bring together, in one place, proven techniques that can substantially increase your broadband speeds,  and we provide recommendations for the best broadband equipment and services.

Without a decent broadband connection, you risk getting left behind. We are becoming more reliant on broadband and the Internet. We’re increasingly doing our shopping online. Our children are using the Internet more for their school work. Our mobile phones can now connect to home broadband connection to avoid running up costly mobile bills. Services such as BBC’s iPlayer are increasingly being used to supplement conventional TV viewing and radio listening. New devices, such as Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s Kindle, offer easy access to information and applications via a home broadband connection. 

While an increasing number of people have the option of superfast broadband services, many are still reliant on ADSL2+ and older ADSL technology. 

After helping many people in our local area with their broadband services, Alastair Brydon and I decided to set up this website and blog to help people more broadly. We live in rural Cambridgeshire and have personally suffered the frustrations of poor broadband speeds. By improving our own speeds, and through helping others, we have discovered that it is possible to substantially improve broadband speeds by using a number of techniques. Our telecommunications backgrounds have helped us to gauge which techniques make the biggest difference. We’ve found that these techniques work successfully time and time again, and most are really easy to implement. For many broadband users, we have been able to double broadband connection and throughput speeds. 

We hope that you find the site useful. We have tried to make its structure clear so that you can navigate the site successfully. If you are looking for a good place to start, then please visit the following page, which summarises a number of our recommendations.

Increase Broadband Speed guide

If you find the information and advice useful, we would love to hear from you. You can email us at info@increasebroadbandspeed.co.uk, as we love to know that we’ve made a difference!