Sprint’s DSL Grows Despite Telecom Turmoil
Sprint [FON] will expand its business DSL offering to include 94 markets nationwide. The company plans to offer customers asymmetrical and symmetrical services (ADSL and SDSL), as well as IDSL, a technology for delivering highspeed Internet access service to customers beyond the traditional 18,000-feet limit from the central office.
The expansion of Sprint’s business class DSL service should greatly enhance the company’s ability to drive increasingly larger amounts of traffic onto its backbone, a particularly important development in the wake of the recent WorldCom debacle. It also puts pressure on incumbent local exchange carriers like Verizon Communications [VZ] and SBC Communications to [SBC] upgrade their respective business class DSL offerings in order to effectively compete.