BT Wholesale has given the green light for the commercial roll-out of its SDSL broadband product. Ten ISPs took part in trials for the SDSL service, which began at some 20 exchanges in London last year. Since then around 100 exchanges have been enabled for SDSL (a symmetric DSL product that offers the same rate upstream as downstream) covering metropolitan areas in London, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Yorkshire, the West Midlands and Scotland.
BT also plans to extend the rollout of SDSL to a further 50 exchanges by January 2004. Details of which exchanges are to be fingered should be confirmed by the end of October. The broadband service is geared specifically for SMEs and other organisations who need to send and receive monster files. In a statement, Bruce Stanford, director BT Wholesale products, said: "Demand is expected to be strong as SMEs can gain real competitive advantage from using this broadband capability, in addition to the range of ADSL services that have been in the market for several years."