Posted: 08th Nov, 2010 By: MarkJ

Broadband ISP Eclipse Internet has told BT and Virgin Media to stop their "
pointless arguing" over wholesale access. BT already offers wholesale access to its lines, although Virgin Media does not.
A
Westminster eForum last week saw BT suggesting that it could extend its UK fibre optic broadband roll-out if only rival Virgin Media opened up its network to other ISPs. However Virgin refused to entertain the idea of offering its lines on a wholesale basis.
Clodagh Murphy, Director of Eclipse Internet, said:
"There can be no denying that the need for high-speed broadband across the UK is now a necessity, rather than a luxury. While it makes great reading seeing two internet heavyweights battle it out, customers are getting sick and tired of the Major ISPs slugging it out over who has rolled out the service first. What’s important to customers is getting proactive information from their ISP around how they can get the most out of their broadband usage limits.
Recently at Eclipse Internet, we launched a super-fast fibre broadband service that will enable businesses to benefit from increased connection speeds and services including VPN, video conferencing and VoIP. So whatever the outcome of this Virgin/BT spat, it is high time the industry thinks about how the customer can make the most of faster broadband."
Eclipse's comment appears to go off in a different direction and ends up being somewhat disconnected from the BT and Virgin Media spat over wholesale access, but then perhaps that's the point.
Getting back on topic, BT had originally said that it would be happy to open up its ducts and poles provided their rivals did too. It probably wasn't best pleased when Ofcom decided to ignore that and force BT to open up alone, although future reviews could change the regulators position.