Slow start to speedy net services

Service providers are in a race to be the fastest
Faster broadband in the UK is becoming a reality as more internet providers offer super-fast services.
Some lucky Britons can already take advantage of UK Online's 8 megabits per second service, which was launched in November 2004.

BT Retail has announced that it will trial the same speed service, with a national rollout by year end.

Other service providers are expected to follow suit and a glut of new voice and video services will follow.

Losing market share

"If the bandwidth is there then ISPs will buy it," said Jill Finger, a research director at analyst firm IDC.

Others will be watching BT Retail's trials, which is initially for employees and later in the summer for customers, with interest.

For BT Retail, she said, the super-fast service could be a way of differentiating it from other players.

"It has been losing market share and this could be one way of gaining some of that back," said Ms Finger.

Wanadoo is set to trial an 8Mbps service in the summer and also plans to roll out unbundled services - which means it takes over the network from BT - which will provide speeds of up to 15Mbps.

There is no timetable for this at the moment. Cable firms ntl and Telewest are also bound to increase bandwidth at some time in the future and, according to an ntl spokesman, are in a better position than BT in the long term.

"BT's network is limited compared to that of cable. With all the other services coming on stream such as video on demand, the question is will 8Mbps be enough?" he asked.

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As we know now acording to BBC - ISP's are now offering 8MB connection and soon 15MB, you think this is really nessassary for a home user? I know I think it is, anyone disagree?

Good job on copying and pasting an entire article.

lol....tbh i dont think it is...my 1mb connection is great and works perfectly for me. Im soon upgrading to 4mb on brothers wishes, but i personally dont see the need for a 4mb connection.

And 15mb is just ludicrus....there is no need and no point in it. but if people are willing to pay for a 15mb connection..then so be it

This makes me and my 28.8k wanna cry....

LOL ... what the hell on earth do you need such good speed j/k
i dun think you will notice any difference when you are comparing an adsl with that ...
that's the other story if u are a heavy downloader ...
But basically surfing web and dl mp3 an adsl is more than enough ... that fast connection ... hmm .. let me think of something to describe it .. it's just like the time u spend on watching porn clips is much more than the time u needed to dl it

With that speed i think you are be a web host at home ..