BT Retail
today announced that its SDSL BT Business Broadband Advanced service is now available from 150 telephone exchanges in major business districts, following successful launches in London and Coventry.SDSL (Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line) caters for customers who need to send out very large files, such as publishers, architects, advertisers, designers and those in the financial services industry. It differs from ADSL (Asymmetric) in that it is symmetrical allowing data to be sent at the same speed as it is received.

BT Business Broadband Advanced is specifically designed for small and medium-sized businesses and allows data to be sent at up to eight times the speed of standard ADSL broadband services. It also allows businesses to implement new, data intensive technologies and applications such as video conferencing.

ÊBT Retail will offer the service from 150 enabled exchanges in metropolitan areas including Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, York, Birmingham and key locations throughout Scotland. This follows the earlier decision of BT Wholesale to make SDSL available in these areas.

The London office of The Jim Henson Company, creator of The Muppets and Fraggle Rock, adopted BT Business Broadband Advanced in January in response to huge growth in data file sizes driven by recent developments in animation.

Peter Guyan, senior systems administrator at The Jim Henson Company said: “We create a huge amount of video and graphics, and we send several gigabytes of data each day. With so much uploading, many of our staff had to work through the night so we needed to go beyond simple broadband. When we installed SDSL we immediately saw our upload times drop by 75 per cent, dramatically reducing overtime costs and giving us a longer lead time to turn around client work.”

Craig Rowland, managing director, Business at BT Retail said: “Back in January we promised to extend the availability of our SDSL retail product if there proved to be commercial demand. We have already seen that demand. The response in London and Coventry has been encouraging, with one company director likening it to ‘suddenly finding yourself in a clear fast lane having been stuck in a ten mile traffic jam’.”

BT Business Broadband Advanced connections cost from £170 per month, with the bandwidth costs varying depending on required capacity.
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