New 20Mbps broadband service to be trialed by Orange UK

Trials of a new 20Mbps home broadband service for the UK has now been started by a major UK broadband provide and it hope to be able to roll out this new high-speed broadband service later this year.

Trials have now begun for Orange’s brand new 20Mbps UK home broadband service, with the latter half of the year expected to be the date for the provider intends to offer the higher speeds to both its existing and new customer alike.

A group consisting of 300 of Orange’s existing customers who are already subscribing to its 8Mbps service will be included in the trials of the 20Mbps broadband service. The trials, which will be run for anywhere between 3 to 6 months will be monitored and both the stability and the performance of the network will be constantly reviewed during the trial, prior to the service eventually being rolled out to the public.

As it stands none of Orange’s existing customers will be allowed to sign up for the new 20Mbps service until either later stages of the trial or the end of the trials, depending on the success of the initial trials.

More modern forms of technology like ADSL2+ is now making speed like this more common in the broadband marketplace and it is also helped along by Local Loop unbundling, which helps many providers beat the current limitations of the ageing BT network by allowing ISPs to install their own much newer equipment inside the telephone exchanges that are owned by BT.

The same ADSL2+/LLU technology that Orange has recently implemented and is current trialing has been used to offer customers of Be Unlimited, which is now owned by O2, with 24Mbps broadband services since 2005 so this technology is by no means brand new.