The trials will run from January to March 2008 on eleven exchanges in the West Midlands from the first two available BT Aggregation Points (APs) in Birmingham and Wolverhampton (ultimately there will be 20 APs). However, unlike BT’s Wholesale Broadband Managed Connect (WBMC) trial, partners trialing Entanet’s service will be able to connect at various locations rather than being restricted to the Birmingham AP.

Known currently as EWCS Broadband (Entanet Wholesale Carrier Services – Broadband), the managed wholesale service enables Entanet’s partners to deliver the features and benefits of ADSL2+ to their customers without having to directly connect to the WBC Aggregation Points – an approach that would require significant investment.

EWCS Broadband will be a particularly attractive proposition to ISPs that are currently taking IPStream Centrals up to around 155Mbps from BT Wholesale. “It’s unlikely that BTW will make a managed WBC product appropriate for smaller providers in the medium term and the high costs associated with taking WBC will be a barrier for them” says Broadband Business Development Manager Carol Davies.

“BT Wholesale aims to introduce IPStream Connect sometime later in 2008, although this product will not deliver the ADSL2+ features increasingly demanded by end users, especially business customers.” Entanet’s managed EWCS Broadband service will allow partners to flexibly take connectivity from 1-2Mbps right up to 1Gbps by using a copper or fibre based ‘Broadband Private Network Interconnection’.