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Friday 28th June 2002

BT extends its broadband horizons 2:37PM, Friday 28th June 2002

BT has announced an initiative to extend broadband services across the UK, by partnering with businesses and other organisations to enable ADSL services in what BT sees as 'previously uneconomic areas'. The company has also announced an SDSL pilot scheme in London.

BT has so far resisted the enabling of exchanges with ADSL in areas where the company considers that the returns would not justify the investment. However, the success of the ACT NOW - Access for Cornwall through Telecommunications to New Opportunities Worldwide - project has persuaded the company to embark on similar initiatives in other areas.

ACT NOW is a coalition of BT, the South West of England Regional Development Agency, Objective One, Business Link Devon and various Cornish bodies, including the county council. This private-public sector partnership helped to subsidise and encourage Cornish businesses to pay for broadband take-up, though almost 50 per cent of funding came from the EC, and enabled 12 ADSL exchanges in the county.

Similar projects are now underway in Scotland, Cardiff, Wiltshire, Devon and West Sussex, while ACT NOW will be extended. BT claims that the success of these will ADSL-enable



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more than 90 further exchanges and bring broadband within reach of another 45,000 small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs).

BT Retail's chief executive Pierre Danon said, 'We have already been successful in connecting SMEs to broadband - we have more than doubled the number connected to 2,500 per week over the past two months. Now we must raise our game to another level. We are listening to our customers, who say they will take up broadband if it is made available.'

Although BT's current broadband offerings are restricted to ADSL services, the company will soon begin a pilot SDSL scheme in London in conjunction with broadband provider Bulldog. Unlike ADSL, which provides slower speeds for outgoing data than for incoming, SDSL allows users to send and receive data at equal rates, and is therefore more suitable for organisations that need to send large files or upload large amounts of content to a Web site.

The trial is planned for late autumn and will involve about 30 SMEs in central London, where Bulldog's broadband coverage extends to 41 exchanges. BT expects some 500 connections by the end of March 2004.

'While this trial is about reaching a specific segment of our customer base in the initial phase, ultimately this is about meeting customer needs UK-wide,' said Danon. 'ADSL will continue to be the best solution for many businesses. However, some who have data-heavy communications will benefit from the high speed a SDSL-based service can offer.'

Simon Aughton

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