Westell partners with laggard!!!!! Naaawww....
<<While none of BT's competitors are providing ADSL service in the U.K., BT can afford to take time making sure the launch of its own service is right>>
British Telecom Lags With ADSL Trial
By Andrew Craig at TechWeb
15-OCT-98
British Telecom announced Wednesday a limited trial of a high-speed Internet access service using Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) technology.
BT began tests of ADSL technology more than two years ago, and the technology already is being used by several telephone companies in the United States. But analysts said BT has good reason not to rush the service to market.
ADSL is a modem technology that provides faster downstream speeds and is suited for Internet usage and video on demand, where the heaviest tranmission requirement is from the provider to the customer.
The latest trial - called Interactive Services Network - will enable ISPs and interactive television providers to offer interactive services to homes and small businesses in North and West London at speeds of up to 2 Megabits per second.
But when British Internet users can expect a full commercial ADSL-based service from BT remains unclear - BT said it won't commit to a date. However, announcements relating to the commercial rollout of ADSL services are expected toward the end of the trial in March 1999.
BT is concentrating its current marketing efforts on the recently launched high-speed BT Highway service and its ISDN services.
"It's a question of doing the right things strategically in the right order," said Simon Brooks, marketing manager for the trial. "I don't think we've delayed [ADSL] unduly, and I don't think we've in any sense tried to stall things," he said.
ISDN and Highway are services that are clearly commercially viable, Brooks said. "They are now, are fully tested, widely available," he said.
"We're still at the stage of testing out the support framework to deliver a commercial service using ADSL," Brooks said. "This is not just another ADSL trial, this is a trial of services which are made possible by ADSL. We've moved to the next stage."
Service providers already signed up for the trial include ISPs BT Interactive, i-way and Virgin Net, and VideoNet, a video-on-demand, interactive TV and home-shopping service provider.
While none of BT's competitors are providing ADSL service in the U.K., BT can afford to take time making sure the launch of its own service is right, according to analysts.
It would be confusing from a marketing point of view for BT to launch another high-speed communications service so soon after BT Highway, said Graham Finnie, an analyst at The Yankee Group Europe, Watford, England.
"There is also a separate issue - whether there is sufficient interest," Finnie said. A small number of power-Internet users would welcome ADSL, but BT would have to look at what its competition was doing and see if there was any need for an ADSL service, he said.
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