AOL has at last announced it's plans to join the Local Loop Unbundled (LLU) market, following rivals such as Wanadoo, Zen, PlusNet and a whole bunch of other ISP's

It has already carried out beta testing at the Battersea and Ealing exchanges, and so far has assembled a team of 100 people to oversee the large scale rollout. Initial costs are put at £50 million which will put it's kit into up to 300 exchanges, or 20% of the UK population. If this proves popular then it plans to increase the number of exchanges with it's own equipment in to 1000, or 50% of the population, this doesn't come cheap and will add another £70 million to the total bill, which is being funded by parted company Time Warner.

AOL is obviously looking forward as it's equipment will be ADSL2+ compatible, enabling speeds far in excess of the BT's current ADSLMax trials which stand at 8Mbps. With such a big player this is bound to worry a few BT execs, but it was only a mater of time before AOL entered into this market.