BT goes for the wide angle

BT has announced plans to provide an ATM wide area service called CellStream, with rollout to be expected sometime next spring. Analysts believe that BT's move is in response to the threat posed by cable companies, since Cellstream is being aimed at companies who want to transport voice and video in addition to data over their wide area links. The service will be available at 34Mbps and 155Mbps, and will be a permanent virtual service (PVC). This is a point to point system that requires connections to be set up in advance. BT hopes to make the timescale for this process much shorter than that required for Frame Relay. There are plans to extend the system to a switched virtual circuit (SVC) to allow all forms of communication, and potentially replace ISDN. BT has denied that CellStream will be in competition with other BT wide area services, and stresses that it is aimed specifically at multimedia connections.