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BT Chairman Slams Criticism of its Dominant UK Broadband and Phone Position

Posted: 20th Jul, 2011 By: MarkJ
sir michael rakebtThe Chairman of BTGroup, Sir Michael Rake, has described critics of its incumbent position within the UK's broadband ISP market as being "years out of date". Rake, whom was speaking on a visit to Wales, also reiterated the operators hope of being able to bring superfast FTTC and FTTP broadband technology to 90% of the UK by 2017.

At present BT is known to be spending £2.5bn on the rollout of its new FTTC (40Mbps) and faster FTTP (110Mbps) broadband solutions, which will cover 40% of UK homes by 2012 and 66% by 2015. BT has previously suggested that it could achieve 90%, albeit only through match-funding with the government's Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office budget of £830m.

BT's Chairman, Sir Michael Rake, said (WalesOnline):

"I just think [BT's rivals] are years out of date. The truth of the matter is that the UK has the most competitive environment in the world for access to broadband. This is the only country in the world where we provide our own network at the same terms, costings and conditions to all companies. It’s led to literally hundreds of internet service providers, yet at the same time BT has made real commitments to investment.

In fact I think the boot is on the other foot. BT has completely established broadband in the UK with massive competition unlike anywhere else including the United States and we still continue to invest £2.5bn in broadband. What we want now is a level playing field – we will open our ducts, but we want Virgin to open their ducts. We do provide very good infrastructure to Sky, but we want them to provide us with access to their content, where they have a 95% premium monopoly, where they can dominate the market and dominate pricing."

Rake, whom is also a member of the Prime Minister's (David Cameron) Business Advisory Group, lives 38 miles from London in South Oxfordshire and inside of a known broadband "notspot". For now the only solutions that he can envisage for the final 10% of the country are Satellite and Wireless ( Wi-Fi , LTE , WiMAX etc. ) based ones, not fixed line like BT itself provides.

Meanwhile BT's Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) product, which will allow rivals access into its existing cable ducts and telegraph poles, is still being trialled. The final PIA product is due to surface this summer, although rivals contest that BT has set its prices too high and want Ofcom to intervene (here).

It's worth pointing out that Ofcom has so far only requested for BT to open up access into its cable ducts, although the regulator has hinted that it would be willing to look at forcing rivals like Virgin Media to do the same. We do not expect this to happen until after PIA has been established.

In separate news BT has connected its 1,000th customer as part of a £132 million project to make Next Generation Access (NGA) services available almost 90% of local businesses and homes across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly by 2014 (more details). That's up from just 50 customers in March 2011.
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