CABLE operator NTL is to offer a broadband service 20 times faster than anything available in the UK today.
Keith Monserrat, NTL's director of policy, said the company's fibre-based network is capable of delivering internet speeds many times faster than BT's older copper-wire network.
"Fibre can carry up to one gigabit," he said. "It will be relatively straightforward for NTL to provide speeds of at least 100 megabytes per second across its entire network. By contrast, BT's planned 21st Century network will not be able to deliver speeds above 10 megabytes."
Although NTL will not reveal the timing of the launch of its 100-megabyte service, Monserrat said NTL customers could expect to be offered the service "in the not too distant future".
NTL hopes to establish a market lead over other UK telecoms operators. Other UKinternet service providers (ISPs) dispute the need for broadband services much faster than eight megabytes. But according to NTL, ISPs are rolling out 28 megabyte services in France and 20 megabytes services in The Netherlands.
According to Monserrat, the move to bandwidth-hungry services based around video on demand requires faster speeds.
The convergence of home entertainment and computing in internet TV is seen by NTLas inevitable and will involve the streaming of movies and other services on to devices that will resemble TVs but have the storage capacity of powerful PCs.
Speeds are enough to provide basic video on demand now, but as well as watching downloaded videos, consumers may want to buy or hire several movies at a time and use interactive video services.
Last September, NTL had 1.1m broadband customers, offered speeds of one to three megabytes, and BT had 960,000.
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Originally Posted by Illuminati
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