Lord’s Committee was told that it won’t be possible for the local groups to finance the fibre rollout in the rural and remote communities unless they can offer a choice of ISPs (Internet Service Providers).

Chi Onwurah, Labour Shadow Business Minister and Steve Robertson, former Chief of BT Openreach, while addressing the House of Lords Communications Committee said that community projects could become “digital islands” if they own the network and simultaneously be the ISP. Both of them recommended common standards for enabling the local groups to become owners of the network so that they could provide phone lines, TV or broadband at competitive prices by inviting ISPs to compete. Mr Robertson told that the Digital Region project providing the best super fast broadband coverage in Barnsley, Rotherham, Doncaster and Sheffield has virtually put up the FOR SALE sign with the hope of finding a new partner. More than 100 million Pounds was spent for the project and now the firm is not having enough customers to meet its expenses. He added that to save the situation, BT Openreach was asked by other ISPs to extent its services to the regions where Digital Region is operating as the other ISPs are not able to extend th
eir services in those areas as it required huge investments.

According to Onwurah, common standards like Active Line Access, would enable a community fibre project to be connected with a national infrastructure like BT’s. She urged the people to follow the Scandinavian style i.e. digging their own connections. The minister who was formerly the head of telecoms technology at Ofcom revealed that Fujistu, BT’s rival for BDUK funds, has agreed to use the common standard such as Active Line Access in any contract it might win. BT on the other hand has not yet made any such agreement so far. The minister also warned that there is a chance of BT becoming a monopoly in the fibre broadband. She was of the opinion that Virgin Media is not a good enough competitor to prevent BT’s dominance.

The minister asked the Lord’s committee to warn BT of its monopoly over the Superfast broadband and she also wants to implement structural separation. Of course she admits that BT would complain but she prefers BT’s complaints to monopoly over Superfast broadband. She stated that it is really paradoxical to see that the government is doing much to introduce competition in NHS (National Health Service) where nobody wants any competition, whereas people want real intervention of the government in the telecoms field to improve competition and the government is reluctant to act. Finally she urged the telecoms regulator in the UK to take all the possible measures to introduce competition in Superfast broadband.