Firms signing up to BT Business Broadband from tomorrow will get a 2 Meg service "as standard", the telco announced today.

The former monopoly is also set to offer business punters an eight hour Service Level Agreement (SLA) and advanced support to provide added assurance to business users.

"Today, speed is often taken for granted by business customers - they're now more interested in what they can do with broadband and how it's supported," said BT Business's Beatriz Butsana-sita in a statement. "Standardising 2Mb across our portfolio for no extra cost is part of our continuing drive to help our business customers really harness the power of broadband."

While BT reckons this is a good deal for firms looking for broadband, Newbury-based business-only ISP altoHiway reckons the telco's "value" packages "fall short of the quality needed by business users".

Commenting on BT's speed increase, altoHiway exec Chris Wood said that far from being a customer benefit, BT's offer was a "repackaging of mainly consumer grade ADSL offerings, dressed up as a business service".

"In the end it will cost business users more for lower quality basic packages," he said.

No one at BT was available for comment at the time of writing. ®

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