• A BT Standard Telephone Line

• An ADSL enabled BT local telephone exchange

• To be within a 'reasonable distance' of the local BT exchange

• Premises - your home or office

• An ADSL Modem or Router

To buy ADSL you have to have a standard BT line and wall socket (the small white BT wall box) - most businesses and homes have these.  The line has to be direct (not passing through a PABX or office switchboard) and free of various other special BT services (Red Care, Star Services, Call Minder, Multiple Lines and Call Waiting). You can order new line if you wish.  At present the line cannot be used for any ISDN or ISDN Highway service.  But in a few months a conversion will be available.  

Currently about 50% of the country can get ADSL Within the next 9 to 12 months this figure is expected to grow to 85% of local exchange. Sign up or Register and we’ll tell you whether or when your exchange is enabled.

Because of the drop in signal strength the further away from the exchange you are, you currently need to be within 4km of the local exchange. The local range of ADSL is gradually being extended and is expected to cover the range of Home or Business Highway.

• The BT line. The service is set up at the main or first socket. You can have a few extensions from there, but these may need to be rewired when the ADSL service is installed.  (If there are too many some will have to be disabled.)
  

• A standard power supply so that the new ADSL terminating equipment can be powered (If you loose power your service will drop).
  

• The connection to your computer equipment – either by an RJ45 standard LAN (Local Area Network), or an active USB port of a PC (note that some older PCs have USB ports but they are not active).
  

• Also note that these need to be reasonably close together. The power supply should be within 3ft of the phone socket and the connecting LAN socket or USB port should be within 3ft. If they aren’t the service will not be installed.

For single machines, either an External USB Modem (which is the most common option) or an Internal PCI Modem will both give the same speeds.
For a number of machines or a network, we would recommend an Ethernet Router.