BT reaches further
21st September 2009.
Whilst city-dwellers are enjoying the benefits of broadband competition with ever-faster speeds, it is easy to forget that many areas of the country suffer from little or very poor broadband coverage at all. Luckily for the broadband have-nots BT is riding to the rescue with its descriptively named Broadband Enabling Technology (BET).
According to BT, BET can enable those still on dial-up to achieve the (comparatively) quick speeds of between 1 and 2Mbps. The technology has already been trialled in Scotland, and this is now being extended to further "pilot" locations. So if you live in any of the following areas, happy days:
• Twyford in Berkshire,
• Badsey in Worcestershire,
• Llanfyllin in Powys,
• Leyland in Lancashire,
• Ponteland in Northumberland,
• Wigton in Cumbria,
• Horsham in West Sussex,
• Wymondham in Norfolk,
• Inverness Culloden in Scotland,
• Dingwall in Scotland,
BT are announcing this as part of an effort to get the government to fund the further roll-out of this technology, but in the current cash strapped times they may find that particular well starting to run dry.
What do we think? Well, glad you asked. Whilst this is clearly better than dial-up, we think investing in piecemeal solutions like this is a bit of a backwards step, and the government would be better to save its (few remaining) pennies and spend them on the roll-out of a national fibre network, bringing speeds many orders of magnitude faster to everyone whether they're city-based or not. But maybe we're just idealists.
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