BT pulls the plug on Midband

BT is canning Midband, a sub-broadband service it unveiled less than three years ago.

The telco confirmed on Tuesday that it will no longer sell Midband, although existing users will still be supported for the next 12 months before being migrated to dial-up Internet access.

Midband provides a connection of up to 128kbps, compared to a standard BT broadband connection today of up to 2Mbps per second and standard dial-up speed of 56kbps. It also restricted users to 150 hours surfing a month, and didn't support always-on email access.

Midband was launched with some fanfare in November 2002 by Pierre Danon, then BT Retail chief executive. At the time Danon, who has since left the telco, claimed Midband would appeal to those who didn't live in an area where broadband was available.

However, it appears that Midband flopped badly. BT said on Tuesday that just 3,300 people will be affected by Midband's demise. It is unclear whether customer numbers were ever much higher.

One analyst firm admitted that its staff "barely remembered" Midband, and another industry insider suggested that Midband had been "swept under the carpet" by BT long ago.

Midband is being phased out because BT is also stopping selling its Home Highway ISDN product, an expensive precursor to broadband on which Midband was based.

Another change affecting the viability of Midband has been the growth in availability of broadband. At launch, Danon said that ADSL's reach would not exceed 90 percent of the population, but today it is over 99 percent.

"Home Highway has been in decline and that’s not surprising as broadband has rolled out to cover almost the entire country. Now you can get 16 times the speed for less money," said Gavin Patterson, BT group managing director for consumer services, in a statement.