I had an email from Plusnet (my ISP – I moved when they offered broadband for £6.49) this week advising me that the Almondsbury exchange has now been upgraded to 21CN and they can now offer an “Upto 20Mb” service from this exchange, and that anyone currently on the “upto 8Mb” service will be upgraded for free.
Previously on BT Wholesale the best we could hope for was “upto 8Mb”. They did advise however, that for people who receive less than 4Mb line speed may not see much improvement, but I suppose those closer to Almondsbury may get improved speed. While we are still not getting fibre, at least improvements are being made at the exchange.
I’m also on plusnet. A very good ISP.
The exchange was updated by BT at least a year ago. Maybe 2.
Has made no real change to my 2mbit/s connection, unfortunately.
I have been receiving an ADSL 2+ connection since 2008, when this was installed in Almondsbury. This is nothing new.
I believe the exchange was enabled at the end of 2006. However ISPs other than BT where able to use this new BT product from 2008.
In your case I think PlusNet are getting rid of old products, and reducing connections costs.
If your connection attenuation is above 35, this change may make a slight improvement down, but a much better improvement up.
If you your connection attenuation is below 35, this change will definitely improve your sown speed and up speed.
In my case (attenuation 40) the speed has improved from 6Mbs -> ~7.5Mbs.
The closer a line is to the Almondsbury exchange, the better the attenuation will be, giving speeds up to 20Mbs.
I am also on PlusNet, and moved to the “higher speed” ADSL a few years ago too. I also have to report that unfortunately my broadband speeds remained the same at 4Mbps.
It’s also worth noting that on some lines where the attenuation is high it sometimes makes the speed worse! The old 8mbps connections are being phased out over the next two years so those who have dodgy connections might think twice about moving over …
I had a new lne fitted at my house earlier this month, and the Openreach engineers who fitted it said they had been told Almondsbury was going to be upgraded to Infinity along with Filton and Winterbourne. Anyone else heard anything similar ?
Well – Almondsbury missed out on the latest round (announced on Tuesday) to other smaller locations such as Stonehouse, Wotton-under-Edge and Crewkerne.
Filton has already been announced as getting FTTC at some point. Winterbourne is due this year.