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By Tony Hallett, 4 September 1998 00:20

NEWS BT has unveiled its long-awaited service for small business and home office users. BTHighway - which offers high-speed digital Internet access services - is due to roll out on 15 September. Afshin Mohebbi, managing director of BT Business Division, said: "This is a significant step towards mass digitisation, so everyone can take part in the digital revolution." BT hopes that by 2003 most UK households will have online access through Highway, many analysts expect call traffic to be predominantly data driven by that date. Mohebbi denied the Highway services will eat into ISDN revenues, or delay the deployment of Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) services offering several megabit per second connection speeds. "We have been successful selling ISDN, but typically to business customers with specific needs," he said. "They may need remote LAN access or access to the Web for example" Mohebbi pointed out BT is leading trials - along with a number of other national telcos and technology companies - of DSL Lite, a flavour of DSL that will eventually be added to the Highway portfolio of products. He declined to give dates of a possible roll out. BTHighway is made possible by a small four-way splitting device which takes a regular copper line and turns it into four connection ports, two analogue and two digital. While BT foresees the analogue ports being used for telephones and fax machines, the digital connections can offer PC-to-Net connectivity at a rate of 64Kbps, or 128Kbps if one PC is used on its own. BT said Ericsson and Marconi Communications supplied the underlying technology for the device. To use Highway, customers will need an ISDN card for their PC or a terminal adapter, with prices typically starting at £50. BT denied the service is too expensive. Prices range from £49 to £149 for installation, and £44.58 to £91.67 for monthly line rental.