BT Wholesale SDSL range to fully launch 8th September
BT Wholesale has published the launch pricing for its SDSL product range on the BT Service View website here. There is no news on whether a larger footprint of DSL exchanges will be able to provide the service, so it looks like it will just be those that were part of the trials.
The Symmetric services are not ideal for home users, since they do not support a voice line as well as the DSL. So if looking for hosting games servers on a line, you will need to have an additional BT copper pair installed. Additionally the geographic range from each exchange will be limited, estimates are 256k out to 3.9km, 512k to 3.4km, 1Mbps to 2.5km and 2Mbps only to 1.6km.
The BT IPstream Symmetric service has a headline contention of 10:1 and comes in four flavours, 250kbps, 500kbps, 1Mbps and 2Mbps and cost £120, £140, £210 and £250 per month (plus VAT). This is quite a bit higher than the regular services, but reflects the assumption that people will be making much higher use of the upstream channel. The largest sting in the tail is the connection charge of £450+VAT.
Hopefully service providers will promote or include in their retail pricing the Symmetric Enhanced Care product which exists at the Wholesale level and provides a higher than standard rate of response for repairs. This should help the product to erode into the traditional SME leased line market.
Also released is the Datastream Symmetric pricing, which can be found here. At £90/month for the basic connection it is pretty expensive, but DataStream allows service providers total control of the backhaul, therefore 1:1 contention leased line replacements are possible. Many people had hoped that SDSL would allow them to host servers at home with the extra upstream bandwidth, but even at £90/month for the basic port connection it is out of most peoples budgets we suspect. For those who like playing with a calculator, the price for virtual paths on the symmetric range can be found here.