BT's quarterly newsletter for industry analysts 
Millions to benefit from broadband boost
Millions of homes and businesses are set to enjoy a free broadband boost following BT's announcement that it will more than double the headline speeds for its residential and business customers.
More than 60,000 consumers are already enjoying the faster speeds through a BT trial and the upgrade to ADSL 2+ technology will be available to other homes this summer. BT Retail broadband customers already enjoy speeds of up to 8Mb/s.
The plans will see consumers and businesses in enabled areas receive faster speeds of up to 20Mb/s as part of their broadband service, at no extra cost.
Based on BT's 21CN platform, the faster speeds will initially be available from 549 telephone exchanges, serving more than 10 million - or some 40 per cent - of the UK's homes and businesses. BT plans to extend that coverage to 55 per cent by March 2010 subject to customer demand.
As well as boosting download speeds, upload speeds will increase to up to 1Mb/s. The faster service will enable customers to surf, upload or download data in a fraction of the time, even when several users are on the same connection.
In a separate move, BT Retail will begin the first trials of up to 40Mb/s super-fast fibre-based broadband in Whitchurch, South Wales and Muswell Hill, London this summer. Openreach is already delivering speeds of up to 100Mb/s to customers in the Ebbsfleet Valley in Kent, using fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) technology.