4. Mobile Broadband services have been one of the surprise hits of the past year, buoyed up by lower pricing, increasingly competitive speeds and even going so far as a take a nibble out of the fixed-line broadband market. What are your thoughts on this new service and is it to be perceived as a threat to your own?
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5. BT recently revealed plans to invest £1.5bn into a rollout of faster ‘up to’ 100Mbps next generation fibre optic based broadband services, which could reach as many as 10 million homes by 2012. The service is bound to pose significant investment problems for ISPs, especially smaller providers, with many needing to juggle both existing broadband services with a completely new product. How do you view this development in the broadband market, is it something ISPs can afford or even need and how do you think customers will react?
6. The rollout of future fibre optic broadband services from BT does have one very obvious downside, it risks widening the ‘Digital Divide’ between more economically feasible urban areas and rural/remote communities where the costs of installing fibre can be prohibitive. Likewise, some locations that are only able to get the most basic of broadband speed and connectivity could be left out in the cold for many years to come. How do you think this problem should be tackled?
7. BT has said that it will open its new next-generation fibre broadband network up to the wholesale (ISP) market, do you think that Virgin Media should now do the same with their more establish cable infrastructure and if so, why?
8. The UK broadband market appears to have consolidated itself into a block of six dominant providers and four medium sized operations. Some of these, such as Sky and O2 (Be), are also increasingly able to offer impressive levels of service quality for lower price points, though they are more the exception than the rule. How does this impact smaller ISPs, which often find it difficult to compete on price without causing detriment to their service quality; have smaller providers now lost their quality niche?
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