The UK regulator Ofcom ruled today that it will “present no regulatory barriers” to the development of an ul super-fast broadband infrastructure in the UK.
“Our message today is clear: there are no regulatory barriers in the way of investment in super-fast broadband,” said Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards. “We want to promote investment but also ensure that there is fair and effective competition for the future.”
In a statement, Ofcom said that “Recent announcements of investment and planned investment, including Virgin Media’s launch of a 50Mbps service, are very positive for consumers. Consumers will benefit even more from increased choice and wider availability.”
The ruling allows BT to go ahead with an investment of £1.5bn in a fibre-optic network, which in theory will give nearly 20 million UK homes access to 40-60 Mb/s super-fast broadband via a FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) service – and an ultra-fast FTTH (fibre to the home) service capable of delivering speeds over 100 Mb/s available to a further 1m homes.
BT had made clear it only wanted to make the investment if Ofcom allowed a fair return and this now seems feasible following the Ofcom decision. So BT is understandably very pleased with the outcome.
BT chief executive Ian Livingston said “Today’s announcement gives us the green light to push ahead with our 1.5 billion pounds superfast broadband investment plans to reach at least 40 percent of UK households by 2012″
So it’s good news for UK households in the long term, though all the UK DSL players currently providing unbundled broadband services (such as Sky, TalkTalk, Tiscali, O2 etc) have a lot of strategic thinking to do. DSL is in real danger of becoming a semi-redundant technology within 4 years and they need to understand how they will gain access to the fibre-optic broadband future.
Virgin Media has no such concerns and has a clear run at the ultra-fast broadband market following the launch of their 50 Mb/sec FTTC service earlier this year.