It is a Historic Day For UK Broadband, Says Ofcom. Is It Really?
Of course, Ofcom’s youthful looking chief Ed Richards has said that this day was really significant in the history and deployment of the UK’s communications. Ofcom, through him has obviously cleared the way for investment in superfast broadband in the country, at least for the supporters of the theory; at least for BT and Virgin Media. However, the big question is; who should gain? The broadband providing giants? Ofcom? High-speed broadband savvy? Then how may it go with the commoner who is ardently anticipating the 2Mbps speed of the base broadband connection promised by Lord Carter’s Digital Britain?
The 2Mbps commoner, if thinks that he had just watched the climax (anti) of a soap opera where the two confronting (pretending to be confronting) groups comes to a truce quite amicably, cannot be blamed. A bouffe, to be precise. BT was apparently on cloud nine, as was Virgin Media. A couple of days back, the telecom biggie BT, had issued a warning that it was reconsidering over their spending billions on the new optic fibre network, provided the regulator allowed them to make a decent return. The two problems that disturbed the UK ISP was – discretionary powers to set up the price that other firms will have to pay for accessing its network, and secondly an existing Ofcom regulatory step that called for the sending of two groups of engineers to eight thousand fibre cabinets, across the UK, which was a cost raiser.
Now, with Ofcom providing the nod of approval by allowing Openreach, BT’s local network division to do the whole job itself, and giving discretionary powers to the ISP to charge its rivals whatever it wishes for accessing its new network, has virtually offered the green light for the roll out of a 40Mbps connection that would start early next year. Virgin Media, on the other hand is sitting pretty with a couple of advantages today – it was not only left alone by the regulator, but also was presented a glowing endorsement by Ofcom’s chief executive. In fact, no steps were apparent from the side of Ofcom to urge Virgin Media to open up its network.
According to the experts, half of the UK would be covered with superfast broadband, by the end of the year 2012, before BT have started, and all thanks to Virgin Media. That says, the scene will be like, 40 percent of the UK will be covered by the 40Mbps service of BT, as 50 percent will enjoy 50Mbps Virgin Media’s cable broadband.
However, the main problems that are likely to arise would be the rates that are awaiting the consumers, coupled with the plight of the numerous people that would not get access to the new networks. Ed Richards has already made his views on the matter clear that he would be surprised if consumers went back from paying a premium for a super fast package. Nevertheless, many others foresee a fresh digital divide opening up. This is all the more evident from another statement of Richards that says the market cannot possibly provide 100 percent UK homes, super-fast broadband. Does these read that UK is all set to stage a bloody and long broadband war?
