Bulldog gets its teeth into SDSL

Bulldog Communications, one of the few companies offering wholesale broadband services in competition with BT, announced on Tuesday that it is expanding its symmetrical DSL (SDSL) range.

Around 350,000 businesses at selected sites across Britain can now choose a range of high-speed services from Bulldog.

These include an alternative to traditional leased lines which Bulldog calls the 'IP leased line' service. This gives the user a dedicated four megabits per second (Mbps) connection with a guaranteed 99.9 percent uptime. Bulldog says it will respond to any fault on the line within four business hours.

Prices start at £162.50 per month on top of a £1,595 connection fee, which compares favourably with the cost of a leased line.

Unlike ADSL, SDSL gives a fast connection on both upstream and downstream links.

Bulldog has been trialling its SDSL services in London for many months, but Tuesday marked a larger rollout, with the company now offering its symmetrical broadband services in parts of Manchester, Merseyside, Yorkshire, the West Midlands, Scotland and South-East England.

Firms in these areas can now sign up for basic SDSL links of up to 4Mbps at contention ratios of 5:1 or 1:1. Prices start at just over £100 per month, plus a £495 connection fee.

Bulldog is expected to widen its network coverage in 2004.

"We plan to increase the geographical coverage of our SDSL services over the next 12 months and, in doing so, we will continue to provide business customers with a greater opportunity to embrace the price-performance and business benefits offered by high-speed SDSL services," said Richard Greco, chief executive of Bulldog.