ISP Review interviews Duncan Ingram (Senior VP) BTOpenworld

Although this is a hypothetical question, we believe our current offering and plans for the future ensure that we provide and will continue to provide a very competitive offering for both business and consumer customers. I believe we provide the most comprehensive offering in the UK.

9) We would like to know what BTOpenworld intend to do about the current problems with packet loss for those whom often engage in online Multiplayer games? This is an issue we hear a lot of complaints about and BTO customer services seem to confirm it, yet for many users nothing has changed/improved in months.

Generally packet loss tends to be less than 1%, although higher on some routes. BTopenworld is aware of the problems some users are experiencing and is currently looking to see if there are any issues within it's own network. There is nothing inherent in the design of the BTopenworld network that should lead to poor gaming performance. However, it is the nature of all UDP traffic that packet loss will take place and all ISPs will experience this in some form. Furthermore, some routes to popular sites will naturally become congested - this is outside BTopenworld's network and thus we are not able to control it.

The games platform we are currently developing and will be announcing later this year, further reduces latency concerns for gamers and we believe it will offer one of the best games experiences in terms of variation of games and low latency in the World.

10) It's a well known fact that since the beginning of the year there has been an overall congestion problem with Internet access and networks in the UK, with the likes of BT just about managing to keep things level, just about. Has this affected BTOpenworld at any one time or have you escaped relatively un-scaved?

We would dispute the assumptions in this question. There has not been an overall congestion problem with Internet access and networks in the UK this year. The number of users in the UK is growing and this growth will inevitably affect network capacity. However, BTopenworld has more than managed to keep things level. The core network is now the biggest in the UK, having grown in proportion to the wider growth, and there has been no affect on the service/network capacity as a result.

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