Great!
"BT's local loop upgrade programme will reach the more than 163 exchanges so far announced. Fibre to the premises deployments will offer close to 100Mbit/s downstream, while the more widespread fibre to the cabinet rollout will be sold as "up to" 40Mbit/s. Both should offer better reliability than current technology."
It really is about time ISPs were forced to charge you for the speed you get. In effect the current system means that the people with slower connections are subsidising the people with faster connections. Don't agree? Think of it like those companies who charge the same P&P however large your order. You order something small and light and pay £3.99 for your P&P when the item should have cost about 75p to post, they're making £3.25 on the deal. That £3.25 goes to pay for the postage on somebody else's order that cost £10 to post.
Likewise if you're on the end of 3 miles of existing copper and getting an unreliable 256Kb/s downstream then it isn't costing BT more to deploy broadband to you since the copper was pre-existing, but will be paying for the rollout of fibre to cabinet and fibre to premises. So you are, in effect, subsidising somebody else's upgrade to 40Mb/s or 100Mb/s.
Ooh! I've just heard that BT do offer you a teeny tiny discount if you have a really slow line (allegedly anything below 512Kb/s) so that's alright then. Or maybe not.
If they were forced to charge per Mb/s then not only would they get less complaints about low speed I suspect there would be less problems over contention since most people won't want super fast connections if they have to pay for the bandwidth.