As BT struggles to roll out its 21st Century Network (21CN), Tiscali Broadband Services (TBS) has claimed it has stolen a march over its rival with its own next-generation network.

The ADSL Annex M broadband service for business customers is a replacement for BT’s SDSL, but at a fraction of the price and with double the geographical coverage, said TBS marketing director Lance Spencer.

TBS offers 16Mbit/s downstream and 2.5Mbit/s upstream, compared with BT’s 8Mbit/s downstream and 800Kbit/s upstream.
“A simple difference is a change in the balance of up and downstream speeds. Doubling the download speed is far less significant than improvements to upload speed,” argued Spencer.

“This reflects the way modern businesses work. They will be doing web, video and audio conferences, video streaming, using hosted applications, you name it. It is worth sacrificing some download speed to improve the upload for businesses.”
Pricing, coupled with an installation time of 10 days rather than BT’s usual 25- to 30-day delivery time, would give the channel something substantial to sell, he added.

First to sign up was Gradwell Communications. “Tiscali offers guaranteed bandwidth with consistency of service,” said managing director Peter Gradwell.