BT launches SDSL trial

British Telecommunications announced on Wednesday that it is launching a trial of services that could be used by U.K. firms as a low-cost alternative to leased lines. The trial will begin in October with BT offering two wholesale SDSL (symmetric DSL) products from 20 London-based local exchanges. By December, BT plans to have extended the trial to involve 50 local exchanges around Britain.

BT had been expected to launch an SDSL trial last year, but BT said Wednesday that this was cancelled after technical problems. An SDSL service is described as "symmetric" because the upload speed--from end-user to network--is as fast as the download speed. BT's two trial products, called BT IPStream Symmetric and BT DataStream Symmetric, both give data-transfer rates of up to 2 megabits per second in both directions.

Graeme Wearden of ZDNet UK reported from London.

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