BellSouth is promising its small business DSL customers that it will fix any service outage within a day or make monetary amends.

Under the new guarantee, which is an enhancement to its previous 24-hour service guarantee, a small business customer who reports a problem before noon and is willing to accept the first available appointment will get same-day repairs. If BellSouth is unable to meet that promise, the company will credit accounts for downtime plus 10 percent of the monthly charge.

The competition for small to mid-sized business service is expected to heat up as cable companies and surviving CLECs such as EarthLink/New Edge Networks and Covad Communications target this market.

In the U.K., where aggressive deployment by BT and others has driven ADSL availability into the 90th percentile, small businesses are taking the service in growing numbers, according to the latest NatWest/ SERTeam Quarterly Survey of Small Businesses. That survey shows the proportion of small firms with a Broadband ADSL connection has doubled to 56% within the last two years, making DSL the most common form of internet connection. Four years ago, less than three percent of small business customers were using ADSL, the survey company said.

BellSouth has 325,000 business customers for its FastAccess Business DSL service, the company said.