Ofcom's Chief Executive, Ed Richards, has welcomed BT's plan to upgrade the country's national broadband infrastructure with a super-fast mix of fibre solutions. Richards also heralded the move as showing clear signs that the market was finally moving in the right direction.

He also commented on how Ofcom would be dealing with the tedious regulatory side of BT's plan:


It's expected that Ofcom may, initially at least, free up its controls over any new services so as to allow for a period of growth and return upon BT’s investment, though it's too early to know how long any such relaxation of rules would last. This could put some of the operators’ competition at a disadvantage, though BT has promised to make its new services available at the wholesale level.

We suspect that a situation similar to the initial emergence of ADSL broadband products in 2000/2001 is likely to occur, where the services were quite expensive for a few years and followed a similar level of pricing between all providers.