Cable giant Virgin Media UK, which is a key partner in Fujitsu's highly uncertain plans (here) to deploy a 1Gbps capable superfast Fibre-to-the-Home ( FTTH ) based broadband network that could reach 5 Million homes in rural areas by 2016, has cast doubt over the projects future feasibility.

Fujitsu's £2bn Open Access Wholesale Network was designed to offer an alternative to BT's own platform by using the incumbent operators existing cable ducts to carry its service. However the project is heavily reliant upon government subsidy to get started and also requires Ofcom to ensure that BT offers access to its cable ducts (Physical Infrastructure Access) via "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" terms.

The project has been rightly praised for its ambition but heavily criticised for its significant dependency upon public cash and the need for BT to lower its PIA prices. Since then BDUK has allocated most of its £530m budget (here) to councils across the UK, which is designed to ensure that 90% of the country can access a superfast broadband (25Mbps+) ISP service by 2015.


Berkett believes that the BDUK funding allocation is far too fragmented (i.e. distributed to lots of different local councils) and would thus allow BT to become the main beneficiary. In fairness the government's BDUK office, long before Fujitsu's project even surfaced, made no secret of its intention to hand funding control to regional authorities.

Fujitsu is currently involved in BTOpenreach's PIA trial process; BT is due to announce its revised wholesale prices for this in September. The PIA product itself would then launch in November. Meanwhile Fujitsu still needs public money to get started, which means bidding against BT at a more local level for a sufficient subsidy.

BT clearly has a head start and some suspect that Fujitsu 's project could now be doomed to fail or would need to be scaled back. So far the project only appears to exist on paper and until that changes then any doubts will be difficult to shake off.