ADSL2+ is a further enhancement to the ADSL standards and was approved by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in January 2003. Despite their similar names, ADSL2+ is quite different from ADSL2.
ADSL2+ offers twice the speed of both former ADSL standards, increasing the downstream data rate to as much as 24Mbps at short distances but uses double the available phone-line bandwidth. The bandwidth is doubled from 1.1MHz to 2.2MHz. People living within 1.5km of an exchange can expect to get up to 24Mbps, with people outside this range likely to achieve 12Mbps, with this speed declining the further away the end-user becomes.
An optional mode in ADSL2+ also doubles the available upstream bandwidth, which will be very popular for those customers supporting VPN access or hosting their own websites etc.
Most of our modems and routers support ADSL, ADSL2 and ADSL2+, and so are ready to support new faster services as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) introduce them.