The boss of UK telecoms firm O-bit has accused the government of "shirking its responsibility" over plans to foster and support the deployment of superfast broadband services around the country. The comments follow a key speech last week by Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, the Olympics Media and Sport (DCMS), in which he attacked the existing broadband infrastructure and outlined his vision for improving upon it (here).

The speech itself was well received (here) and even O-bit's CEO, Dave Breith, acknowledged in a letter to ISPreview.co.uk that Hunts vision was "a fantastic sentiment, and much better than the previous government’s underwhelming promise of 2Mbps broadband for all". However Breith fears that encouraging utilities companies to open up their pipes for superfast fibre optic broadband cables does not go nearly far enough.


Founded in early 2002 by current CEO David Breith, O-bit has since experienced phenomenal growth and even appears in the Deloitte fast 50. Today O-bit exists to offer a full range of telecoms products and services as an alternative to British Telecom ( BT ). As a result it should know a thing or two about the market.

The government has said that it would make use of the BBC's Digital Switchover budget, which is estimated to be worth around £130m per year, to help fund superfast services into rural areas. It has also managed to free up £47m to help plan for how best to use the BBC cash. However the BBC money would not be used until 2012, with the aim being to give private sector investment a chance to work first.

Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) – the organisation which will be the delivery vehicle for these policies – will hold a special industry event on 15th July to provide further details. Next week's emergency budget might also give us a few clues as to what we can expect in the future.