ADSL2+

ADSL2

There have been a lot of advances in technology recently and one of the most important has been the rollout or unbundling of the ADSL2+ Broadband. This new broadband technology which currently still uses the copper wire telephone line has increased the speed of data transfer from 12Mbps using the ADSL system to speeds of up to 24Mbps which will now see it competing with cable broadband services.

Who will offer ADSL2+ broadband?

At the moment only ADSL2+ Broadband ready BT exchanged can allow connection to this service and although BT are unbundling more and more ADSL2+ compatible exchanges there are still only a few providers that have the ability to offer this service. At present most service providers have to unbundle their own ADSL2+ broadband packages locally which means that they can only offer access to areas that are close enough to the exchange. And to really benefit from the 24Mbps access rates of the service you need to be right next to an exchange because the further away you get the slower your access becomes.

Who will be using ADSL2+ broadband?

The kind of people that will use the new and incredibly fast ADSL2+ broadband access are an ever expanding group. Online gamers, file-sharers, and people who want to stream audio or video across the internet are just a few of the types of people that will really benefit from the speeds ADSL2+ broadband offers. With games played over the internet and everything from movies, music and big software packages available to all, high speed internet has had to increase to meet the needs of the user and ADSL2+ broadband truly delivers this.

The good and the bad of ADSL2+ Broadband

In plain term ADSL2+ Broadband gives users the fastest internet access currently available to users that need to download or just use large amounts of data at high speeds. But while ADSL2+ Broadband offers this kind of access, it is only to those users that access it close to an enabled telephone exchange. This means that for the large majority of users this is where the promise from providers of up to 24Mpbs internet access becomes a problem. A lot of users taking up ADSL2+ broadband will find that, due to their location, they will never actually receive these speeds and in a lot of cases will receive nowhere near the 24Mbps they expected. Another geographical speed issue is something called the contention ratio which means that due to the limited exchanges in some areas and large numbers of subscribers more people are accessing the same exchange. Now because everyone is getting space on a finite line the more people accessing the line the slower it becomes. This means that even if you live right next to an exchange the possibility that a large number of people will also be accessing this exchange as well means you may still get slow access. This, however, will become less of an issue as BT make more and more exchanges ADSL2+ broadband ready.