BT Openreach CEO Steve Robertson has spoken out about the disparity in broadband offerings, but backed his company's decision to focus on rolling out fibre optic networks.
Speaking to PC Pro, Robertson admitted there is still a big issue over providing fast broadband to certain parts of the country, but said the government needs to offer more help to address the problem.
"I've got a huge amount of sympathy for people… if you're only getting one meg. Once upon a time the idea of getting a meg down a copper line would have been absolutely ridiculous and amazing experience, but times move on."
Government needs to do more
He also pointed to the amount the government has offered to help get the rest of the UK on 2Mbps broadband or better - £200m - and defended BT Openreach's decision to spend £1.5bn on fibre optics rather than address this problem:
"It comes down to the basic economics. At the end of the day, every pound I spend – or Openreach spends – is money which an investor has made available to us and they need to get a return on their investment.
"In the places where it doesn't make commercial sense for us to do it as a business, we need to work with public authorities, as hard as we can, to bring broadband, and hopefully super-fast broadband, to those places."
To read the full interview, head on over to PC Pro to see all the talk on BT's plans for bringing broadband to Britain.
Your comments (6) Click to add a new comment
tech89
March 10th 2010
6. I agree with spudhed. Make the cost of broadband lower in line with the service speeds people are getting.
Virgin Media usually delivers (or close enough) to the speeds the offer. Thank god for ntl,telewest,vm for putting in new infrastructure - something that BT should of done a while ago.
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spudhed
March 6th 2010
5. if they feel that bad then maybe they should make their crappy service cheaper to fit its poor level of service, i currently pay for 20mb and get 3mb its insane. and the upgrade itself is half arsed at best, fiber is only being connected between the exchanges, your vintage 1960's copper wire will be bringing it from the exchange to your house, so there will be little real improvement to the service unless you live very close to the exchange, as soon as i possibly can im going back to virgin, i was an idiot to leave in the first place
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syganymede
March 6th 2010
4. Was promised upgrade last march (2009) by BT/Orange. But still getting only 0.5mbps...
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tech89
March 5th 2010
3. Ironic that BT feels sympathy for it users when BT reduces their broadband speed below 1mb at peak times.
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scottgilbert
March 5th 2010
2. Hmm how about this for a solution, the MP's hand back their £1000 payrise (£646 000), the govenments slashes MP's allowances for this year by 50%(£46.5m).
Then the GOV can take control of this project and contract it out for a fix price, so if it does go over budget then the contractor loses not us the TAXPAYERS.
Once this is completed the gov. rents out this to those who wish to provide a medium to us for a minimum 10years contract which will give the chance for the gov. to recoup their money back but they must stipulate that they can only charge £20 per month for 100MB download including line rental.
I propose that Google and the Koreans get together and come up with a plan to connect all the people of GB with a minimum 100MB connection.
http://www.google.com/appserve/fiberrfi/public/overview
Google
http://gigaom.com/2009/02/01/by-2012-koreans-will-get-a-gigabit-per-second-broadband-connection/
Koreans
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nitrofan
March 5th 2010
1. Sympathy? Maybe… but precious little else .
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