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UK Broadband
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BT Warn Over Broadband
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| The
Times |
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THE chief executive of BT Group has warned that
60% of British homes and businesses will be denied the benefits of the
broadband revolution unless Ofcom, the industry regulator, changes its
approach.
BT’s Ben Verwaayen said Ofcom’s method of encouraging more competition in
high-speed internet services — known as local loop unbundling or LLU — would
not work outside large urban centres.
LLU allows rival companies to install their own equipment in BT’s local
exchanges, enabling them to provide faster and more sophisticated services
than BT itself supplies.
However, Verwaayen said LLU was too costly to make it economical outside the
top 600 exchanges, which cover about 40% of the population.
“What about the other 60%?” he asked. “What if your business is in Swansea
or Southampton? In some places LLU simply does not work for economic and
other reasons.”
BT contends that Ofcom is risking a repeat of the “digital divide”
controversy that attended the initial roll-out of broadband. Many rural
communities were initially unable to receive broadband because BT could not
see a way of making a return on its investment.
BT is pressing Ofcom to relax regulations to allow it to create new versions
of wholesale broadband, which could then be sold to communities outside the
scope of LLU.
Verwaayen said: “We are committed to making sure that LLU is a successful
tool, but LLU by its nature will be limited in its application.
“We need to make sure that advanced broadband services are available
wherever business and consumers are located — whether you’re in Manchester
or Liverpool or Southampton or Swansea or the Highlands.”
Faster broadband will make it possible to transmit television over BT’s
wires, and introduce other advanced services that make use of video. For
example, an e-mail could be converted to a video message and re-routed to a
mobile phone.
Ofcom is close to completing a year-long review of the telecoms sector, with
the aim of strengthening competition and encouraging investment in
next-generation services.
After a slow start, BT’s rollout of basic broadband will be capable of
reaching more than 99% of homes and businesses by this summer. Verwaayen
said this was “on a par with running water ... We have the best coverage in
the G7 and almost the best coverage in the world.” |
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