AT&T this week announced the availability of a high-speed DSL offering for small and medium-sized businesses.

The new DSL service, currently sold as SBC Yahoo DSL Expert Plus, doubles the bandwidth of dynamic IP DSL offerings previously available from the former SBC, with downstream speeds of up to 6Mbps. Upstream speeds clock in at up to 608Kbps.

The new Expert Plus DSL package is available for business customers at a three-month introductory rate of $49.99 a month if purchased in a bundle. At month four, the service costs $64.99. AT&T/SBC local service and a one-year term are required.

Other features of AT&T's DSL Business Edition offering include:

* Wireless LAN access at more than 12,000 Wi-Fi hot spots in 42 countries
* Business Mail, which includes a domain name, a starter business Web page, and 10 custom e-mail addresses with 2GB of storage for each mailbox
* Three free months of Yellowpages.com SMARTconnect Web sites, which include a custom domain name, Web site design and copywriter service, Web site hosting, self-editing tool to update the site, and online traffic statistics
* Savings on wireless data options, including the BlackBerry 7100g, BlackBerry 7290, and Treo 650TM Smartphone
* Firewall protection
* Service-level agreements of 99.9% network availability, 40.0 milliseconds network latency, 99.9% data delivery and an installation interval guarantee
* Priority technical support

Expert Plus DSL is currently available in Connecticut, Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, California, Nevada, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio.  AT&T says it has more than 6.5 million DSL lines in service.

AT&T's introduction of 6Mbps DSL follows a similar move by BellSouth. BellSouth offers its service for  $74.95.