Bt Adsl Roll Out Plans Revealed
Seb Potter
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User since: 22 Apr 1999
Articles written: 19
After 6 years of "testing" its high-speed ADSL network, British Telecom has revealed that it plans to introduce the service into only 10 cities by March 2000.
The announcement was made this week, coinciding with industry regulator OFTEL's consultation document on how BT should open its networks to competition, and BT's proposed domination of high-speed internet access in the UK.
BT has responded by announcing that it will offer wholesale access to its ADSL network for competitors who wish to offer their own ADSL subscriptions. However, this is likely to lead to an end cost of between #50 and #150 per month for consumers.
Sir Peter Bonfield, BT's chief exective, said that "This roll-out plan is a major step towards making Britain a world leader in the information revolution. By committing to a large scale roll-out, BT will play a vital part in stimulating a competitive mass-market for consumers as well as businesses of all sizes."
The 10 cities to be blessed by BT's announcement are: Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Coventry, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Manchester and Newcastle. The approximate 85% of the UK not covered by BT's plans can only hope that services will arrive before the turn of the next millenium.
Seb is a Jedi Master in the art of creating sites and keeping servers running. This often means hitting them repeatedly with forces that defy rational explanation, though he prefers to descibe it as "administration". When he's not practising his percussive skills on E450s and AS400s, he can be found masquerading as the senior developer for some widely varied clients. It's still not certain whether or not the meanings of CMS, CRM, and B2B have penetrated the alcoholic fog enveloping his brain, but he makes convincing noises to customers about XML, XSLT, Python, J2EE, PHP, Perl, C++, and OpenGL.
Seb has been in the web game pretty much since it began, and still has fond memories of the time when a web could be swept aside with a duster and spam was pork luncheon meat. Despite being the developer of one of the first commerce sites in Europe, he has yet to make any real money.
Being English, Seb doesn't like SOAP, but instead has recently discovered something called ZOPE. Zope is a platform that runs Plone which he thinks is the coolest thing since high-performance, real-time 3D APIs, which he often writes small games in.
Seb lives in the best little city in the world, and used to commute 5 hours a day on British trains. He is subsequently immune to all forms of torture techniques.
