America Online and regional phone company Bell Atlantic have got together to get some DSL action going. They will be offering high-speed Internet access over phone lines, marking AOL’s entry into the world of broadband Internet access.

AOL plans to offer Bell Atlantic’s Infospeed DSL access as a US$20 per-month premium upgrade. The service will be available in Bell Atlantic’s local region, which covers the Eastern Seaboard from Maine to Virginia. That territory is home to 40 percent of the US population and 40 percent of AOL subscribers.

“This could really be the thing that makes broadband take off,” said Arthur Newman, an analyst with Gerard Klauer Mattison. The service, to be launched this summer, would be AOL’s first commercial foray into high-speed Internet access. The service will be based on DSL, or digital subscriber line, technology, which transmits computer data over regular phone lines up to 20 times faster than the fastest traditional modem.

The companies plan to offer the service to about 7.5 million homes by the end of 1999, and more than 14 million homes will have the service by the end of 2000.

Seeing how BT’s appropriately named ISN [i.e.DSL] trials are going, we might be seeing something similar soon across on this side of the pond.

http://www.aol.com/