Posted: 16th Jan, 2004 By: MarkJ
Speaking in London yesterday, Patricia Vaz, BT's regional director for south-east England, stated that stimulating demand over improving coverage is now the key to broadband uptake:
Addressing an audience of local government and regional development organisations in London on Thursday, Vaz said telcos shouldn't simply build high-speed networks and assume that people will turn up and use them. "Broadband's footprint is not the issue any more," said Vaz. "BT will achieve our target of making broadband available to 97.5 percent of the population by the end of 2005. The big issue is take-up. In the south-east, for example, broadband take-up is only nine percent," Vaz said.
Vaz said that broadband take-up would increase if people were made more aware of the applications and services possible over broadband -- from music and video content and online gaming to instant messaging and Voice over IP services.
"We need to persuade people that spending £1 a day on a broadband connection can have a radical change in the efficiency of their business, or in the efficiency of their lives," said Vaz. "If we are too slow to tell people of the benefits, then we're missing a trick," she added, urging the public sector to encourage businesses and individuals to embrace broadband.Very true, yet BT should have equal focus on both coverage and demand because the two have always been inexplicably linked. More @
ZDNet.