As of January 25th 2010, new and existing BT Total Broadband customers in an enabled exchange area will be eligible for the up to 40Mb service. This will be one of the fastest broadband services available to customers in the UK.

More good news for BT customers is the price. They are charging as little as £19.99 per month for the 40Mb service, which is more than £7/month cheaper than Virgin Media’s high speed service. However, in balanced against that, the Virgin Media offer, it is 10Mb faster than BT, at 50Mb, and Virgin Media are also very reliable with their speed – if you pay for 50Mb, you will get very close to 50Mb nearly all the time. It remains to be seen if BT will be able to get close to the promised 40Mb with such regularity.

One factor that is definitely in BT Broadband’s favour is their upload speed. At 10Mb upload speed, it does put most of it’s rivals to shame, up to 6 times faster than Virgin Media. It is always worth remembering though, the advertised “up to” speed and the actual speed you get can vary greatly with BT.

By the end of 2010, BT are estimating that 4,000,000 homes and businesses will have access to this new faster service, and they expect many to take advantage. With online gaming on the up, a high speed connection is becoming a “must” for many households with teenagers, making their gameplay smoother, and this speed increase could even lead to a further boom in the online gaming sector.

News about the Government’s proposed plan to tax each and every household with a phone line in order to raise money for the development of cheap cable broadband and high speed mobile broadband connections in the future has been circulating for some time. However, as more details become available, will the average family actually benefit from the tax, or is there a better way in which to invest in our future?

According to official reports, a monthly charge of 50p will be added to every home phone bill in the UK, totalling an extra £6 a year for those affected. However, analysis of the new rules to be enforced by Revenue and Customs actually suggests that for millions of people this charge could be significantly higher.

VAT will be charged on top of the flat tax rate, which in itself will increase the cost by 17.6 percent when VAT is restored to its original level on 1st January 2010. According to a leaked document this will mean an extra £30 million a year will find its way into the public purse as the tax itself becomes subject to taxation.

In addition, it seems that the charge will not be levied against individual homes, but will rather be based on the number of lines connected to any one property. As such a home with two phone lines rather than one will be charged £6 a year for each line, plus VAT.

This means that people with cheap cable broadband connections using fibre optic technology who also have a copper BT landline will be charged for both connections, even if they only use the fibre optic line for broadband.

The problem could be more severe for businesses and the CBI has called for a detailed breakdown as to how the tax will affect enterprises with multiple landline connections.