Broadband News

BT increased SDSL coverage footprint by a factor of 100%

This morning, BT announced plans to double the number of exchanges on which SDSL services can be ordered from 150 to 300 exchanges. This move both enlarges the existing areas of SDSL availability and moves into new areas from Exeter, Cardiff, the M3/M4 corridor, Cheshire, North East England and Aberdeen.

The first batch of 34 exchanges will be enabled within a month with the second batch being ready by the end of November, suggesting that BT has been planning this for some time. The remaining exchanges will have RFS dates announced within three months.

SDSL is particularly useful for businesses who frequently have to both send large amounts of data, whereas consumers are generally receivers of data, but consumers too would welcome increase upstream bandwidth, especially on 1Mbps and 2Mbps ADSL services.

"Service provider customers have told us where they have demand for symmetric broadband services from their customers. Together with our own market analysis, this feedback has helped shape the next stage of rollout with 150 more exchanges doubling the number of exchanges providing SDSL.

This will open up opportunities for service providers to attract new customers and give wider geographic coverage to existing customers."

Bruce Stanford (Products Director), BT Wholesale

Eclipse Internet has been one of the ISPs at the forefront of a demand-led push for increased SDSL availability for the last 18 months through its www.wewantbroadband.co.uk campaign which encourages users to register their interest in SDSL services as well as traditional ADSL services. The BT campaigns thus far have been focused more on ADSL enabling of exchanges but we may soon see a shift to formalise the demand tracking framework for SDSL as well.

"We have asked our service provider customers to tell us whereabouts in the UK they have strongest demand for SDSL. This initiative by Eclipse Internet is valuable to BT and will help us shape the next phase of our SDSL rollout"

Peter Hancock )Head of broadband symmetric products), BT Wholesale

A full list of the exchanges can be found here. [seb]

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