The bandwidths of the two profiles offered to residential customers have doubled since February of last year: instead of 300/50 (download/upload) or.600/100 kbps, ADSL customers can now surf at 600/100 or 1200/200 kbps. And for the same price as before. In addition, a new profile with 2,400/200 kbps is now offered. Existing lines were upgraded and migrated to the new bandwidth profile free of charge.

Over 500,000 accesses were successfully migrated to the higher throughput rates. Only in 0.5% of cases was migration not possible because of the distances involved. The profile for these customers remains unchanged. The customers in question will be notified accordingly by their Internet Service Provider.

ADSL boom and competition over the last mile continue unabated

At the end of March, ADSL orders topped the 600,000 mark, further boosting ADSL as the leading broadband technology for Internet access. Thanks to expansion of the network, over 98% of Swiss households benefit from ADSL. Some four million fixed lines in Switzerland are now ADSL-enabled.

ADSL technology competes directly with the broadband Internet offerings of cable network operators. Switzerland is one of the countries with the highest growth rates in broadband Internet access. Customers benefit from continuous improvements in performance (bandwidth) as well as very favourable prices.

Berne, 1 April 2004