Bell Atlantic Corp. Wednesday announced plans to accelerate the rollout of its Digital Subscriber Line service.
Bell Atlantic plans to equip 700 central offices handling 17 million lines with DSL technology by year’s end. By the end of the first quarter of 2000, plans call for 1,000 central offices with 21 million lines to be DSL-capable.
By year’s end, DSL will be available to a majority of the business and residential customers in the New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. metropolitan areas as well as northern New Jersey.
DSL deployment will begin in the third quarter in Albany, Buffalo and Syracuse, N.Y.; Baltimore, Greenwich, Conn., Harrisburg, Pa., Norfolk, Va., Springfield, Mass., and Wilmington, Del. Portions of New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Vermont and West Virginia will come on line early next year.
“We’re intensifying our commitment to making Infospeed DSL a mass market service and responding to the thousands of customers who’ve told us they want DSL as fast as we can get it to them,” said Amy McIntosh, president of Bell Atlantic Consumer Data Services.
“We’ve never had a product with so much pent-up demand. With our customers clamoring for speed, we’re doubling the pace of our deployment to bring Infospeed DSL to many new markets and communities this year.”
Bell Atlantic offers a variety of DSL packages for consumers and businesses. Prices begin at $49.95 a month for consumers and $64.95 for businesses.