News 

The speed boost has been made possible by infrastructure guardian BT OpenReach, which has allowed the broadband vendor to access a frequency that wasn't previously available.

According to the company, the service will use the same backbone as its existing 20Mb/sec SDSL network, which offers

ADVERTISEMENT

identical upstream and downstream speeds.

However, by transmitting data over the higher frequency and bonding together eight lines, Easynet Connect claims its can double its connection speeds to 45.6Mb/sec, though an average of 40Mb/sec is more realistic.

"Etherstream is quite innovative as it bonds together copper lines at a layer 2 Ethernet level so we can provide what is very much like a fibre-based service, except it's delivered over copper," says a spokesperson for the company.

"It's symmetrical, so you can get the same bandwidth speed up and down, and it's also uncontended as there's no-one else sharing that circuit with you. It's as close to guaranteed bandwidth as you can get."

However, the higher frequencies can only travel a short distance, meaning that businesses hoping to profit from the service will need to be within 1km of their exchange.