BT to slash up-front SDSL charges

BT is planning to halve the connection charge to service providers for its wholesale SDSL broadband products for businesses.

From 21 October, the wholesale connection charge for BT IPStream and BT DataStream SDSL business products will be slashed from £450 to £225 for orders completed by 24 February 2005.

The cuts build on BT Wholesale's decision earlier this month to double the number of exchanges offering SDSL connections this year from 150 to 300.

SDSL offers the same data transfer rate upstream and downstream, and is seen as particularly suitable for small and medium sized firms, people in remote offices and teleworkers.

These are the broadband users who often need multimedia applications such as fast file transfer in both directions.

Wally Freeman, general manager for broadband products at BT Wholesale, said in a statement: "This special offer is designed to stimulate the take up of SDSL services which are still relatively new products, and to encourage more of our service provider customers to add SDSL products to their broadband portfolio."