BT Wholesale launches new managed Broadband service

BT Wholesale is making available a new product to Service Providers, called ‘Managed Broadband Services’. This new service is designed to allow Service Providers to sell an ADSL service without
all the high startup costs and investment currently required. Essentially this means ISPs that have put off offering ADSL due to the costs of the BT Central link required and associated hardware
costs can now enter the ADSL market with relative ease.

The service will provide space on a BT Central pipe, manage the network and deal with operational isses, in other words a fully managed service. The real crunch will be the price, this is
described as competitive.

This new service puts BT Wholesale in competition with companies like Netservices who market to the VISP market. So it will be interesting to see how this competition develops once providers are
using the service. One thing that is certain is that it is likely that a profusion of VISP’s just like in the dialup sector will start to provide ADSL once this product gains momentum. The good
ones will survive, but the weak may flourish for a while and then drop away. A good VISP is often marked by offering useful options to a sector of the market, e.g. targetting a local area and
offering the option of onsite hardware setup.