BT promises free broadband upgrade to 20Mbit/s

Many BT Retail customers will see headline speeds more than double

BT has announced that millions of its customers will have their broadband connections boosted to up to 20Mbit/s at no extra charge.

Broadband customers in the right areas who are currently on BT Retail's up-to-8Mbit/s service will see headline speeds more than double, and upload speeds jump from up to 448Kbit/s to up to 1Mbit/s.

The company is also providing its BT Broadband Accelerator speed booster pack, which includes the I-Plate filter, for free to BT Total Broadband customers who order it online, although they will have to pay £1.20 for postage.

"The BT Broadband Accelerator can make a big difference to the speed of your broadband. We think it is so important that we've taken the decision to offer it to our customers for just the cost of the postage," said John Petter, managing director of BT's consumer division.

"Between that and us more than doubling headline speeds for millions of homes and businesses, most customers should start to see a rapid boost in the performance of their connection.

"We have a track record of not charging customers any more when we increase the speed, and this time is no different. BT broadband customers won't have to pay any more to get higher speeds."

Although BT is touting the speed boost as free, eligible business and residential customers will have to renew their contract in order to receive the upgrade. New customers within the right areas will automatically be placed on the faster service.

The higher bandwidth will initially be available to around 10 million users, equating to around 40 per cent of UK homes and business through 549 exchanges. This figure is expected to increase to 55 per cent by March 2010.

Glasgow will get even higher speeds, as more than 15,500 homes and businesses in the Hillington, Cardonald and Crookston areas of the city will benefit from fibre optic lines offering broadband speeds of up to 40Mbit/s, potentially rising to 60Mbit/s in the future through BT Openreach.

Ahead of its 2010 schedule, Openreach is building 56 new street cabinets and installing around 30 miles of fibre stretching from the exchange.

The announcement forms part of BT's plan to see 1.5 million UK homes have access to fibre broadband by early summer 2010.