BellSouth reportedly plans to upgrade plant serving about 10 percent of the homes it serves with advanced VDSL2 technology, and leverage it to offer speeds in the neighborhood of 50 Mbps, and perhaps as high as 80 Mbps.

According to a story in Investor’s Business Daily, the telco will begin the upgrade in the second half of 2007, and target 1.35 million homes in areas where it has already run fiber to within 250 feet of homes.

The majority of the upgrade will happen in 2008, and blow its existing DSL speeds out of the water. The report noted that BellSouth will build out the rest of its region with ADSL2+ to produce speeds in the range of 20-25 Mbps.

The report noted that BellSouth’s plans are subject to change following the AT&T takeover.