First 21CN services start to appear

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 14 Jul 2008 at 09:38

The first broadband services based on BT's 21CN network are ready to launch.

Entanet, a wholesale broadband provider that has been working with BT on 21CN trials for some time, will tomorrow start offering ADSL2+ services based on BT's Wholesale Broadband Connect.

The services will be available to any customer whose local telephone exchange has been upgraded for 21CN, which is so far only a few dozen exchanges in the West Midlands.

ADSL2+ services are theoretically able to offer speeds of up to 24Mb/sec, although as our recent feature revealed, most people will see actual throughput speeds that are considerably slower than that.

That, of course, hasn't stopped ISPs selling it as "up to 24Mb/sec". ADSL24, one of Entanet's resellers, began marketing the 21CN-based lines in May, although the good news is that customers won't be paying any more for the higher speeds than they do currently.

Slow start?

Elsewhere, other ISPs are still only dipping their toes in 21CN. Even BT Retail and BT-owned Plusnet are still only testing the service.

In a statement published on its website, PlusNet says it will "start testing ADSL2+ services internally later in the summer and then with customers this autumn."

"We plan on being cautious during the trial after our experiences with the DSL Max rollout two years ago and will carefully review the progress before migrating large numbers of customers across to ADSL2+," the ISP claims.

"The actual migration process involves an engineer visit and a rejumpering at the local exchange, not too unlike a switch to/from LLU, so we will start out with limited numbers of opted-in customers so we can see exactly how the new provisioning and fault processes work."

Despite the tentative start, a BT Wholesale spokesperson told PC Pro that it was "very comfortable with the level of take-up."