The UK is a country where broadband penetration is relatively high, right? So how come none of the providers actually provide anything higher than 4mbps, on a good day?

Over here in France, often considered the backwater of the Internet (and not for nothing since France Telecom severely crippled development of the Internet in France while pushing their "minitel" well into the late '90s), I've had 10mbps since early 2005 if I recall correctly. For the past few days I've been enjoying a 23mbps DSL connection and could have done so as much as a year ago. All of this without an unbundled local loop in this area.

BT's 24mbps connection to be rolled out next month is old hat. The technology has been around for ages. Why has it taken them so long to deploy this?

France is much further ahead of the UK with local loop unbundling. BT have until recently occupied a near monopoly position at the telephone exchanges, which has prevented faster providers gaining a foothold. There are 24Mbps providers already in the UK but they are limited in their reach. By the time BT catch up they'll move to something faster.

It is embarrassing though. A Swedish friend of mine had 100Mbps three years ago.

Okay, so other countries have faster services. Okay, so complex, rich websites loading a bit quicker would be nice, moving large files & emails in/out faster would be good too. But I'd contend that the great majority of home users probably aren't making maximum use of their 8mb ADSL Max service at the moment (discounting those who are still on 512k/1mb/2mb - bet there are still a few of those...).

Right now I don't feel I really /need/ 24mb to my home, much less 100mb! Personally I can wait for the applications to start coming along - even if this does present a chicken-egg dilemma the 7mb (typical) I get from ADSL Max is quite adequate for now, thanks.

Only 3 years later than other major industrial countries then, and 2 years later than Germany rolled out 50mbit VDSL2. By the way, parts of Sweden had 100mbit for 20 pounds a month, 6 years ago.

Fortunately the likes of Sky and others mean that 75% of UK customers can get adsl2+ today, but the move to vdsl2 has to come from the incumbemt.

LOL - I was on that and got a worse connection - close to the exchange I might add! - than I did when i was on 2 meg! Then along came Be and now i'm on a 24 meg connection and I usually average out at around 16 - 17 meg - I'd rather pay for a 24 meg and get that than pay the same for 8 meg and get 2 meg if I'm lucky!!

"So how come none of the providers actually provide anything higher than 4mbps, on a good day?" - is a total BS statement.

I'm not going to say the UK is fantastic, and I'd agree that BT has a lot to answer for, but statements like that are just rubbish. I have a consistent 14mbps at home through Be* and very happy with it.

So I suposidly have an 8mbit line with Bt which connects at 6mbit (fair enough). Even late at night the fastest downstream I get is no more than 2mbit per thread ,no matter what the source. My point is Bt should sort out there current network and actaully deliver downloads closer to the promised 8mbit. Maybe '24mbit' ADSL2+ tech would actaully give me my 8mbit downloads..

VDSL2 - Sky could do it if they wanted to AFAIK, they can do sub-loop unbundling if they wanted, but they don't, because of the high costs. So they'll wait for BT to do it, then cry foul on open access and BT will be made to give them access for peanuts.

BT are a public company, they have shareholders to please, you don't please shareholders by spending £4bn on FTTC with a return that takes many many years to come through.

"I have a consistent 14mbps at home through Be* and very happy with it."

On a NON-UNBUNDLED line?

The local loop is unlikely ever to be unbundled in this town, but I don't really care since I now have 23 mbits/s coming down a France Telecom line from an alternative ISP.

The remark I made about connections hardly ever being faster than 4 mbps concerns non-unbundled lines.