BT brings trials and promises to the broadband battle

BT reckons that the home broadband battle has moved beyond speed and access into content, applications and managed services.

It has given the world a look at the reasonably new future with four about-to-be-trialled products - all of them marked 'price to be revealed later', but due to appear as full products by the end of September.

First is flexible bandwidth, giving users the ability to temporarily boost their broadband speed with the click of a mouse – up to 2Mbps. Trials of this start next month.

Then comes BT Rich Media, in partnership with Real BT, to provide you with the tools to do something with this flexible bandwidth. "The platform will enable thousand of content publishers, from record labels to local football clubs to reach millions," according to BT. This is set to be launched on 6 April.

BT Communicator with Yahoo! Messenger will let users manage all their home communications -  phone calls, emails, instant messaging and text messages - from their PC, and is available for trial in May.

BT Remote Management System will let BT take the strain of hooking up the home network, wireless LAN etc. This is to go live later in 2004.

Pierre Danon, CEO of BT Retail, said these offerings "demonstrate clearly that there is more to broadband than speed, as there has to be if we are to realise mass-adoption far beyond the current two million mark".

But these services would all be familiar to users on the other side of the Channel. Michael Philpott, broadband analyst at Ovum, said: "These announcements don’t come as a surprise. BT is just catching up with its European counterparts."

And he expects pricing to be a problem. "Other operators have had problems with flexible bandwidth. The problem is that it is as easy to click down as up – there has to be a certain stickiness there, to make sure that the customer stays up," he said.

BT has set itself a target of five million connections by 2006.