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SDSL in Hastings
Published: November 25, 2004
For "non-Hastonians", Hastings has been dubbed an e-city. Quite what that means is anyones guess but the reality is that our town has had many millions of pounds invested in turning it into a high speed gateway to the world.
Our rail and road infrastructure is awful so utilising broadband seems like a great way to improve comms and assist in the development of local businesses. Hastings currently has 4 hotspots as well as all 3 exchanges ADSL enabled. Extended reach means Filsham Valley can at last get broadband (if line quality allows).
Being a pilot town for internet connectivity, BT have announced (through the grapevine) that we are due to have the town centres' exchange [NDHAS] SDSL enabled. This has been welcome news to the businesses here running leased lines because the nearest PoP is Brighton so leased lines cost in the region of £50,000 a year to operate. SDSL is substantially cheaper and certainly has the QoS to compete with it. Check out the latest prices from PlusNet.
SDSL involves two phone lines and offers equal speeds both on the upstream as well as downstream. This is essential for offices that are geographically seperated and constantly send data to each other. VoIP which gives you free telephone calls between locations can now have some QoS and the option to internally host intra/extranets becomes a reality.
I wouldn't know if Hastings has the customer base to support a SDSL exchange but it's a great boost for the town and another step towards acheiving regeneration and attracting new business and investment.
SDSL Update
As of the 14th Feb 2005, Hastings is now SDSL enabled so if you require synchronous broadband, off you go. One requirement is that you are pretty close to the Hastings exchange though as SDSL doesn't have the ability to go far like ADSL can.