BT enters SDSL service arena
Resellers will be able to market BT's service
BT has unveiled an SDSL (Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line) service that will compete with Easynet and Tiscali products.
Resellers will be able to market BT's service. It has a £595 connection fee and monthly charges of £170, £230 and £345 for 0.5MB, 1MB and 2MB, respectively. The initial contention ratio is 10:1.
"We anticipate that 10,000 businesses will go for this by the end of the year. About 25 per cent of those sales will go through resellers," said Mark Hollister, director at BT Indirect Channels.
Resellers may be able to cash in on the upsell. BT plans to sell services after its research found that a quarter of business DSL customers bought their connection with either network backup, virtual private networks or security services bolted on.
Martin Saunders, head of products at ISP Easynet, said: "This is good for us and the market. Although we can offer contention ratios of 5:1, partly because our network is under-utilised."
Craig Thomas, a market strategist at Tiscali, said: "The real goal for all of us is to offer a differentiated SDSL service."
BT will sell SDSL in London and Coventry initially, with Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Sheffield and Newcastle following on this year, bringing coverage to 35 per cent of the population.
"SDSL will allow SMEs to deploy new applications where a leased line would be the alternative," said Hollister. "Companies may also want to use it to migrate from ISDN."