Posted: 10th Sep, 2003 By: MarkJ
Having officially launched their business broadband SDSL (Symmetric = same speed both ways) service, BT has now revealed its plans for future expansion. It's expected that a further 50 exchanges will be upgraded by January 2004:
BT LAUNCHES WHOLESALE SDSL BROADBAND PRODUCTS AND REVEALS PLANS FOR NEXT STAGE OF SDSL ROLLOUT
BT today announced plans to widen the availability of SDSL broadband services following the commercial launch of its wholesale broadband symmetric products.
The commercial launch of BT DataStream Symmetric and BT IPStream Symmetric products follows a trial of the services at 100 exchanges serving metropolitan areas in London, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Yorkshire, the West Midlands and Scotland.
BT plans to extend the rollout of SDSL to 50 further exchanges by January 2004. Target areas extending the coverage in these regions have been identified using market analysis and feedback from service providers. Details of the exchanges to be upgraded for SDSL in this phase of rollout are being finalised and should be confirmed by the end of October.
Bruce Stanford, director BT Wholesale products, said: "The launch of our broadband symmetric products strengthens the portfolio of business-class broadband products which service providers can offer to their customers. Demand is expected to be strong as SMEs can gain real competitive advantage from using this broadband capability, in addition to the range of ADSL services that have been in the market for several years.
"The next phase of BT Wholesale's broadband symmetric rollout has been designed to help service providers address market demand and to meet their customers' needs."
BT broadband symmetric products offer the same rate upstream as downstream and are suitable for the SME, remote office and tele-working access markets. They are suitable for end-users who require business class connectivity to their service provider for applications such as fast file transfer and web hosting.
BT IPStream Symmetric is an end-to-end broadband IP access product for ISPs available in 250kb/s, 500kb/s, 1mb/s and 2mb/s variants. BT DataStream Symmetric allows wholesale operators to design their own IP networks with BT's symmetric ATM broadband components providing connectivity to end users.