Be - 24Mb Connection hits London

[Markz]

Faster Faster.....

A new broadband service offering a connection up to 24 times faster than other providers at less than double the price began a national rollout today.
For £24 a month customers of broadband provider Be are being offered a download speed of up to 24 megabits a second, three times that available from closest rivals UK Online, Bulldog and Homechoice and 12 times that on offer from BT and Wannadoo.

The bandwidth offered by the new service will be enough to allow consumers to stream two high definition TV channels through their computer simultaneously, while they surf their internet or make voice calls.

The service will also allow customers to upload information onto the internet at a speed of up to 1.3 megabits a second - five times quicker than any other service on the market.

"This radically advanced capability will change the way people use their computers and opens up a world of opportunities as exciting as the advent of broadband itself," said Dana Pressman, managing director of Be.

The company has been trialling its service since the beginning of September and it is now available across much of London.

To subscribe customers must have a BT phone line and pay a connection fee of £24.

Paul Smyth, a spokesman for Be, said the national rollout would begin in major cities and would take up to a year to complete. Consumers can find out if the service is available on their line on the website hxxp://www.bethere.co.uk. Mr Smyth said that while standard broadband connections allowed people to download music from services like iTunes at a rate of one track in four minutes, the Be connection would enable them to download seven albums in the same time.

He added that customers would be provided with a "Be Box", a wireless router including two phone ports, and that the company planned to later offer voice over internet protocol (VoIP) which would allow people to make calls using their computers.

"Be is relatively pioneering when you consider people are still announcing one meg unlimited broadband and we are making available up to 24meg connections at only just over twice the price," he said.

"What we're trying to be competitive on is not necessarily the price, though, but the technology."

Blair Wadman, broadband product manager at comparison website uSwitch, said the deal was competitive.

"It's £10 a month more expensive than the average broadband service but considering what you're getting it's a good price," he said.

"If you're just surfing the internet and sending emails though you will be fine with a £15 a month broadband connection."

[Mojo]

Says mine should be running in Leeds around june 2006, id pay £24 no probs cos im paying £29 for aol.

[Str33tb0y]

no offense lads but these are wild claims, for starters it will dependent on how much cable is between u and the nearest adsl exchange, over certain cable lengths and you will never hit speeds like that, its just not possible, so read the small print b4 parting wiv ur cash

[ruffers]

From memory their fastest connection as of a couple of weeks ago was running at around 18.5 meg.

When you get to think about it, how fast do you need? I'm on 8meg Bulldog and my speedtests show about 7 actual (which is nice). But it's very rare I find a website that I can download from at that speed. The fastest I've had on actual file downloads is about 560 kbps from T-Mobile, the rest sit at typically 200 ish. You can only download as fast as it's pumped out, as it were.

8meg will cover digital telly, phone and broadband all at once, so it'll do me.

(Bollocks it will, when Bulldog upgrade I'll be first in the queue )