BT in peace with the broadband speed wars

BT broadband provider has proclaimed record profit for the last month is now keeping up its bash line on fibre to the home rather than for the national telecoms network owner alone. BT will press on broadband internet as an application driven service that will help compete with rivals who have unbundled the local loop in exchanges to give them cheaper access.

According to BT, the speed wars did not provide any value for its customers. Some detractors have charged that BT is under-investing compared to Telcos in South Korea and on the continent, who are rolling out fibre optics to the home, offering up to 100 Mbit/s access. But BT has denied the claim and said that they have not published any plans to offer access speed beyond 24 Mbit/s.

BT has announced that it will discard its range of fixed speed wholesale broadband products, and offer only its “Max” service, which is currently theoretically capable of 8Mbit/s, but is highly variable based on environmental and network conditions.

BT Wholesale has recently launched an effort to bag more broadband resellers keen to offer a full range of services, but without the investment in content and infrastructure investment that BT Retail’s rivals at Sky and Virgin can match. It has signed up Vodafone and the Post Office as early big names for its white label managed services venture, which offers the functions of a triple-play ISP without the tricky deal brokering and engineering.

If BT can get the people to think in terms of the services their mobile broadband can deliver, rather than the speed of the pipe, then it will be able to beat more Vision boxes and more Fusion Wi-Fi mobile handsets. They also might not have to spend billions for upgrading the copper wires.