By Ron Coates, 27 April 2004 11:05
NEWS Today BT announced plans to make available ADSL from another 1,128 exchanges by mid-2005, without waiting for registration triggers to be hit.
The company claims that this will give 99.6 per cent of households and commercial premises access to broadband. Around 570 exchanges, covering 100,000 premises, will remain outside the broadband pale. Around 400 of these are in Scotland and the majority of the rest are in Wales with the odd rural English exchange thrown in.
The move comes after a weekend of speculation over the possibility that new regulator Ofcom could dust off old plans and demand that BT be carved up in the same way as the gas and electricity industries, into a supplier arm and a customer arm.
A BT spokesman said: "Waiting for people in an area to hit the registration target was not a very joined up way of doing it we will save money on this planned approach, by linking some exchanges in a region, for instance.
"We will be in partnership talks about how to link the remaining households - by DSL, by wireless, perhaps by satellite."
Alison Ritchie, BT chief broadband officer, paid tribute to local campaigners for broadband access. She said: "The impact that local campaigners have had has been phenomenal. These local heroes have helped change the market and this in turn has contributed to our decision to take this approach."
The demand registration scheme, launched mid-2002 led to the upgrade of more than 2,000 exchanges spurred by 880,000 individual registrations.
The BT spokesman pointed out that the new scheme would not only allow BT to plan its investment but "would give certainty to other providers".
Comments
There are 8 comments. Join the discussion
1. Martyn Witt
More BS from BT!! I hope the Regulator presses BT to come clean on the thousands of users excluded because the length of line to their local exchange defies BT's ability to offer the service. These are always conveniently forgotten in BT's trumpeting.
2. Chris Down
Just how reliable are the BT figures for coverage ? I live in an area where the exchange is enabled but the whole of our part of the town.. several thousand homes.. cannot have ADSL as we are too far from the exchange.
If it wasn't for NTL we would be in the broadband wilderness.
I can't see how this qualifies as "Universal"
3. anonymous
Could someone please explain to me the meaning of "broadband availability" and "access to broadband"? Each time I hear a BT spokesman the slice of the population to which broadband is "available" goes up by 5%. 3 weeks ago it was 80% (Ann Heal). Last week it was 85% (Alison Ritchie). Surely, when you factor in the effects of distance from the switch, cross-talk in the bundle, contention ratios and the impact of concentrators, the proportion of the population that actually take out an ADSL contract if they want one falls to about 30% or less. I might be wrong, but it would be useful if this terminological fog could be dispersed.
4. Don Tregartha
But what about Milton Keynes?
Not many people know this, but in Milton Keynes, one of Europe's newest cities, the first city in the country to have universal cable access for comms and t.v, ADSL is limited to a maximum speed of 512k - That's if you are lucky enough to get it at all. No-one likes to talk about it, as it would obviously have a detrimental effect on inward investment. If you don't believe me ask BT.
5. anonymous
Interesting claim that this will give 99.6% of properties access to Brodband. Although our local exchange is enabled, around half of the houses don't get access because of the distance requirements. Do we count as having access despite this? Incidently we are not talking about a rural location but a suburb of a largish town.
6. Chris Goodman
The expansion of broadband into the "remote" areas can well be costly where there is insufficient subscriber base take-up to produce a return on investment. Add the huge capital cost for isolated areas and the outlay becomes astronomical.
Who pays for the investment? BT is a commercial organisation and, just as with the cable companies who only cover profitable areas, has to be profitable.
The logical solution would be for the regulator to divide up the uneconomic areas to have broadband installed and share them proportionally between all telco providers.
Let us not beat just BT about the ears while NTL, Kingston, etc remain quietly in the background.
7. steve morris
bt broken up well lets use the example of British Rail, that became the extremely successful company called Railtrack which then became Network Rail. Do you see an Improvement?
Some companies deserve to be let alone at least BT has some competitors. And before you ask I have both BT and one of their competitors phone lines and their competitors broadband. Also I don't own shares.
Let them compete if they aint that good one of the Europeans or Americans will take them over
8. Graham C
I'd like to endorse the comment from Martyn Witt.
Here in Bradley Stroke (north of Bristol) we have a huge community of folk in a Broadband Waste-land.
Years of lack of forthought by BT have resulted in one of the larges housing developments being (predominantly) out of range for ADSL from the Filton Exchange.
I see no efforts to improve this situation - other than halving the data-rate.
Hundreds of small/home business are being strangled by BT - all we get is hot-air promises.
Wake-up or Get-out BT!
(yes I'm Angry)