Cable giant Virgin Media has warned the UK government not to burn its £830m pot of public money on BT . The cash has been set aside, until 2017, to help the rollout of new "super-fast" broadband services into areas where private sector investment alone will not go.

Ironically Virgin Media, which refuses to offer its cable platform out to rival ISPs on a wholesale basis, still hopes to make use of BT's telephone poles in order to extend its own coverage. However they have pledged that such activity would not "be driven by government funding".


By contrast BT has called on the government not to hand out any cash to operators that would refuse access to rivals on a wholesale basis. However such a move would effectively include many of their main rivals, both big and small alike, and in many cases would not be practical.

Next month will see Virgin Media introduce its new 100Mbps cable (DOCSIS3) service, while BT plans to follow with a 100-110Mbps FTTP product next year. Sadly BT's FTTP technology will, at best, only cover 2.5 million UK homes. Virgin's service should eventually reach half of the country.

BT recently claimed that it could bring "super-fast" broadband services to 90% of the country, provided the majority of government money went its way. However the math for such a prediction simply doesn't add up (here).