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BT has announced that it has passed a major landmark in broadband, with 15 million homes and small businesses signing up to the service.

According to BT, the milestone was reached in late August, with more than five million connections through BT Retail and the rest via other companies.

BT points out that this, in conjunction with the other major network Virgin Media, brings the total number of homes in the UK on broadband connections up past the 19 million mark.

That's more than the US, France and Germany in terms of broadband as a percentage of households, according to BT's calculations.

Success story

Olivia Garfield, BT strategy director said: "Broadband Britain has been a success story with widespread availability, low prices and high take up.

"People were sceptical when BT backed broadband in 2002 but the figures speak for themselves with the vast majority of new customers choosing broadband over BT's network rather than alternative ones where prices are far higher.

"The story doesn't end here as BT is now investing a further £2.5 billion to roll out fibre broadband to two thirds of the UK.

"This will help the UK climb the league tables for speeds, one of the few areas in which we don't lead the world."

Ofcom has finally released its long awaited research into UK broadband speeds, with the data showing the stark truth of just how misleading 'up to' can be.

Ofcom's data, which was compiled with specialists SamKnows, showed that although fast broadband is beginning to become more common, thousands of us are getting less than half of our advertised levels.

Interestingly, Ofcom's press release only deals with 'single thread' performance, basically downloading a single file and testing the speed rather than multi thread tests that download files simultaneously and probably more fairly represent household usage.

Ofcom's full report does contain the multithreaded comparison, but the watchdog chose to go with single thread – which is kinder on DSL.

But, as the data shows, not much kinder – with the power of fibre optic obvious in Virgin Media's massively superior showing.

Taking the 'up to 20/24Mbps' data, for instance, the actual average over all ISPs is a paltry 6.5Mbps considerably less than half the upper rate.

Virgin Media's single thread results are an average of 15.2 to 16.5Mbps over 24 hours compared to 6.5 to 8.4Mbps for TalkTalk (up to 24Mbps) ,7.0 to 8.4Mbps for Sky (up to 20Mbps) and BT languishing at the bottom of the table with 6.1 to 7.6Mbps.

Virgin Media reaction

Virgin Media is understandably buoyed by the data, with executive director of broadband Jon James saying: "Ofcom's broadband speeds report again proves Virgin Media is consistently more than twice as fast as any of our DSL competitors.

"Because we use a next generation fibre optic cable network, our customers can be confident of receiving 90% of the headline speed they buy from us.

"And we're continuing to invest in our network so we can deliver more of what our customers are paying for - whether on 10Mb, 20Mb, 50Mb or our soon to launch 100Mb broadband service.

DSL criticism

"Whilst Ofcom's report is good news for our customers, it's clear that our DSL competitors just aren't keeping up with their promises of 20Mb broadband," James added

"No DSL customer receives 18Mb, only 2% are receiving more than 14Mb and, on average, DSL providers are delivering just 33% of their advertised 'up to 20Mb' speed.

"We need to ensure people are not being ripped off and the lack of transparency in broadband advertising risks damaging consumer confidence in superfast broadband.

"The Advertising Standards Authority has announced a review into the way broadband is advertised and the need for change is now urgent."

Ofcom needs to change code

Which? chief executive Peter Vicary-Smith believes that the Advertising Standards Association needs to change what ISPs are allowed to advertise in terms of speed

"Its great that Ofcom has taken action to improve the information provided by ISPs at the point of sale, and that customers are now able to end their contract without penalty if the service they receive is significantly different to that promised," he said

"However, some internet service providers continue to advertise ever-increasing speeds that bear little resemblance to what most people can achieve in reality.

"We want the Advertising Standards Authority to step up to the mark and put an end to these misleading claims once and for all."

BT Response

John Petter, managing director of BT's Consumer Division, said: "BT already gives customers the most consistently accurate prediction of the speed specific to their line.

"We support OFCOM's Code but want to go even further and are investing in systems to make our predictions even better - and to have them confirmed in writing.

"BT is investing £2.5 billion in superfast fibre broadband. This will bring speeds of up to 40Mbs/s to two-thirds of the country with a quarter of those premises getting speeds of up to 100Mb/s, the fastest in the UK.

"Our investment will deliver superior broadband to that offered by Virgin, at a much cheaper price and unlike Virgin's will be open for other companies to use, and so will be good news for the UK.

"We continue to invest heavily in our network, bringing speed improvements to customers nationwide. We give our customers comprehensive help and advice to get the best speed out of their line.

"For example, all BT Broadband customers can get the BT Broadband Accelerator, which can eliminate electrical interference, free of charge".

Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Media and Sport Secretary, has outlined his vision of the future of the UK's technology sector, with the onus very much ramping up the UK's broadband's speeds to be the best in Europe.

Speaking at the Broadcast News Consortia, Hunt said that those who thought superfast broadband was just about speed were missing the point.

"Superfast broadband is not simply about doing the same things faster. It's about doing totally new things – creating a platform on which a whole generation of new businesses can thrive," he noted.

Adding a bit of number crunching, Hunt believes that superfast broadband could add £18 billion to the UK's economy and create 60,000 jobs – numbers he quoted from the Federation of Small Businesses.

As for who would benefit, Hunt pointed out what is going on in South Korea at the moment.

"The biggest driver of high speed broadband in Korea, where I was in January, is children getting help with their homework.

"Telemedicine is next – and already patients undergo heart surgery on the remote island of Guam supervised remotely by surgeons in Hawaii."

In the Digital Britain report released last year, it was noted that the whole of the UK will have access to 2Mbps broadband by 2012, a number Hunt still wants to achieve.

"The government supports the commitment to ensure a universal service level of 2Mbps as the very minimum that should be available. We will use a proportion of the underspend on digital switchover to fund this.

"Promoting a digitally-enabled Britain is one of the core purposes of the BBC, and this will bring services like the iPlayer within the reach of many more people."

Opening up the infrastructure

To make sure that the UK is ready for the broadband boost, three market testing projects have been announced, with Broadband Delivery UK in charge of these policies.

To make sure that the prices are lowered, Hunt is welcoming Ofcom's proposal to open up access to BT's ducts and telegraph poles but also wants other providers to offer their services.

"I would like to go further," Hunt explains. "If legislation is necessary to require other infrastructure providers to open up their assets as well, then – as announced in the Queen's speech – I am ready to bring it to the House as soon as parliamentary time can be found."

In his speech Hunt is clear about where he sees the UK broadband-wise in relation to Europe, stating: "Our goal is simple: within this parliament we want Britain to have the best superfast broadband network in Europe."

Broadband is ten today - or at least, it is in the UK.

NTL's very first customer, Mark Bush, got his broadband connection a decade ago today, and things would never be the same again - especially not for the poor Mr Bush, who was promptly sucked into The Matrix and used as a battery*.

It's impossible to overstate the importance of broadband. It's like the invention of sliced bread, or beer, or legs. If you weren't online in 2000 you have no idea of how desperately bad things were back then.

Downloading an MP3 took a week. It was quicker and cheaper to make a movie than to download one. It took longer to send an email than to write a book. Online shopping? Online shocking.

Put it this way. If Chatroulette had existed in the year 2000 you'd have had to draw your genitals on a bit of paper, choose somebody's address from the phone book and post the picture to their house.

Broadband didn't just speed things up, although of course that's its most obvious benefit. It was also the final nail in the coffin of per-minute access - in the late 1990s, my introduction to CompuServe rang up phone bills and access charges of several hundred pounds in just one week - and it signalled what somebody pretentious would call a paradigm shift.

Dial and disconnect

Before broadband, the internet was something you dialled into and disconnected when you were finished (or more likely, your ISP disconnected you when you were in the middle of downloading something important that couldn't be resumed later).

Once broadband was here, the internet was as ubiquitous - and ultimately, as unremarkable - as running water or electricity. These days we only really notice it when it isn't working properly.

Things aren't perfect - few of us get the speeds we'd like, some of us still can't get it at all and Ofcom is considering giving ISPs a spanking over the claims they make about broadband performance - but comparing today's internet with that of 10 years ago is like comparing civilisation with a hairy man shouting at a mammoth.

From Spotify streaming to social network stalking, multiplayer gaming to movie downloading, the things we do online every day either wouldn't exist or would cost so much that we wouldn't bother doing them.

Back in 2000, .net magazine (from the same publisher as TechRadar) made a prediction. "In years to come we'll tell our kids about the internet of the nineties, when people used things called modems and got excited about speeds of 33.6Kbps," it said. "And they'll laugh at us, and put us in homes."

* Not really.

Tomorrow (Friday 12 February) brings to a close the first public consultation on the introduction of the new 50p levy for all telephone lines in the UK.

Introduced in the Pre-Budget Report in November, this "Landline Duty" will be enforced from 1 October 2010. Tomorrow's deadline is for commentary on the administration of the new tax. A second consultation, drawn up by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), closes on 1 April and will decide how it's spent.

It's a good time, then, for TechRadar to look into exactly what this new charge is designed to achieve in terms of improving access to the broadband network, and who gets what kind of service now.

Graham Wayne retired from his position as Chief Information Officer at software publisher Mastertronic Group about five years ago to develop a career writing. Since he moved to the small village of Hatherleigh in Devon, he's finished three books and runs a small IT consultancy to supplement his income.

"Ironically, I've got the worst broadband service out of any of my clients," he laughs. "On average, I get about 800Kbps download. It gets a bit better than that at times, but it can be very flaky and drop to less than 100Kbps too."

Wayne believes that his patchy internet service disadvantages him in two ways. First off, he says, is the issue of why should he pay the same amount for an unreliable, slow broadband service as someone just a few miles away that routinely connects at over 7mbps.

More important, though, is the impact it has on his business."Essentially, I have to organise my business around my service, rather than the service complementing my business," he explains. "It costs me money in the sense that every job I do can take me an extra two hours to download updates and so on for them."

Rural areas need broadband

There's plenty of justification for using public funds to improve access to broadband in rural areas.

"All the Post Offices are closing and they're encouraging you to do things like tax your car and apply for a TV licence online," says Rob Beadle, a part time teacher and IT consultant from Trevothan on the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall.

"There's the money you can save, too: BT will give you a discount if you go for paperless billing, and a lot of my customers have got children and grandchildren all over the world and use Skype and online video to stay in touch. For the majority of people now broadband is starting to be a way of life. You can save more than you spend on broadband just by shopping online for things like utilities and holidays."

Beadle and Wayne both say that all of their customers that want broadband can now get it. Rather it's slow speeds and continuity of service which are the issue. BT reckons that around 15% of households can only connect at less than 2Mbps, and around 160,000 homes have no access at all via the Openreach network.

Broadband tax won't help them

What you may not realise is that the 50p a month Landline Duty is not being raised in order to help people like Wayne, Beadle and their clients.

In last year's Digital Britain White Paper, most of which is currently undergoing parliamentary scrutiny as the Digital Economy Bill, there were two separate proposals which have become more or less conflated in the public mind.

The first is the issue of connection speed. Digital Britain introduced a pledge for a Universal Service Commitment (USC), which will guarantee availability of 2Mbps broadband to 99% of the population by 2012. This is has been costed at £200m, and is being paid for by surpluses from the Digital Switchover fund.

The USC will likely be achieved by by using the existing copper network in the most isolated areas, and technologies like Openreach's new Broadband Enabling Technology (BET).

"Initial trials [of BET] in Inverness and Dingwall, Scotland have been very successful," a BT spokespereson told TechRadar. "With lines of between 7km and 12km running stable 1Mbps services. Where a second copper line is available, lines can be bonded together to provide a 2Mbps service."

Funds from the Landline Duty, on the other hand, are earmarked specifically for the Next Generation Final Third project. It will raise over £1billion over the next seven years to ensure speeds "considerably higher speed than available currently" are available to 90% of the population by 2017.

Though the current consulation documents talk about "synergies" between the two undertakings, the stated aim of the Final Third project would still leave almost as many people on, as far as anyone knows that far into the future, what will be a sub-standard connection as there are today.

The current proposals favour an "inside-out" methodology - which means funding the upgrade of exchanges that are most likely to benefit commercially from faster than 8Mbps speeds today. Andrew Heaney, Director of Strategy and Regulation at TalkTalk //www.talktalk.co.uk//, believes that the subsidy is premature because the market hasn't had chance to work in these areas today.

"The Unversal Service Commitment is focussed on areas where the market hasn't delivered," Heaney says. "The cost per household is around £100 and the benefit is to take households from half a meg to two or more. That's good value for money. This new proposal is for a far bigger sum of money being spent on something that was going to be done anyway, and is going to take speeds from the average of 3-4Mbps to, say, 40Mbps. Is there really public value in doing that?"

To early to intervene?

The government's own documents would seem to support this, noting that it's taken just over a year for Virgin to reach 50% of the population with 50Mbps broadband, and BT will only take two years to extend its next generation access to 40% of households.

Even if, as Ofcom suggests, the market will top out at between 60-70 percent coverage, there's little evidence to show demand for faster than ADSL2+ access yet: in famously well connected Denmark the number of 50Mbps+ subscribers actually fell by 50% last year, because there are no services which demand that kind of access in the home yet.

A spokesperson for BIS highlighted three areas - Telemedicine, cloud computing and teleworking - which will be enabled by superfast broadband.

"Telemedicine provides real-time interaction between doctor and patient so consultation and even examinations can be undertaken online," they said. "This brings huge benefits particularly for the elderly and those who live in rural communities."

Appointments by webcam

North Bristol NHS Trust, however, is already doing exactly this by shipping out webcams to people in Cornwall in order to reduce the amount of commuting for appointments oncology and long term patients have to endure.

The online consultations work well over ordinary broadband, although speeds of 10Mbps or more are needed for high definition conferences and information sharing between satellite surgeries and the new superhospital in Bristol.

BT told us that 24Mbps via ADSL2+ "Is more than adequate to support today's bandwidth hungry applications".

"Does superfast broadband transform teleworking from being not possible to possible?" asks TalkTalk's Heaney. "No. How about education? These aren't high definition streaming services that are being introduced, they work perfectly well over 1-2Mbps."

Fifty pence a month, or six pounds a year, may not sound like a lot of money, but even Rob Beadle can see problems for those on low incomes.

"I think to myself - there's my mother in her old age, never going to have broadband and she can't really afford another 50p on her telephone bill, why should she pay for everyone else?"

Andrew Heaney claims the tax is "regressive" and take-up of newly available superfast services will likely be by those who could afford alternatives.

"Who are going to be the people that take up superfast broadband services in rural areas?" he says, "Politicians with second homes and relatively rich people in those areas. It's worse than regressive. It's robbing the poor to pay the rich. It's appalling."

People who made a new year's resolution to save money this year might want to take a look at the revamped budget Be Value package, which has been cut from £13.50 a month to £7.50 a month.

The service is available on an annual contract, with free set-up and a data cap of 40GB per month.

Download speeds are the widely adopted "up to 8Mb" and customers who use more than 40GB "regularly", will be asked to move to an unlimited package, says Be.

As a launch deal, though, the service provider is offering unlimited usage until 30 June 2010.

Be Value also comes with a free wireless modem and free tech support.

It's not quite the cheapest UK broadband deal currently on offer – it's beaten by the Plusnet Value package at £5.99 per month.

The Plusnet Value package is capped at a lower 10GB of data per month, although any usage between midnight and 8am won't count towards your monthly allowance.

Unfortunately, neither service is available across the whole of the UK, so you'll need to pop your phone number into the form on the ISPs' websites to see if you qualify.

A new survey of the world's leading industrialised nations show's that the UK's internet connections are among the slowest around.

The OECD study of net connections in 30 countries pegs the UK as the 21st fastest, behind France, Spain and Portugal.

Penetration better

It also assesses broadband penetration, showing some improvement there, although 13th place out of the 30 still puts the UK firmly in mid-table.

Government plans to improve both speed and penetration currently rely on the recently announced £6 a year tax on domestic phone lines that aims to raise £170 million annually to pay for faster broadband connections.