BSG welcomes BT announcement on next generation broadband
The BSG welcomes today’s announcement from BT that it plans to invest £1.5 billion in making next generation broadband available to up to 10 million homes by 2012.
In April 2007, the BSG, – the UK’s leading independent advisory group on broadband – published its Pipe Dreams Report that stated that there was a two-year window to create the right environment for next generation broadband deployment in the UK.
Commenting on the announcement, Antony Walker, CEO of the BSG said “There has been a question mark hanging over the UK telecoms sector for the last 18 months about how we move to next generation broadband. Today’s announcement is by no means the whole answer, there are still questions about the regulatory framework and how we extend services to more rural areas, but it is a very significant step forward???.
BT’s announcement comes in response to increasing competition from cable and new mobile broadband services and growing demand for bandwidth from consumers. Walker described it as “a positive sign that the transition to next generation broadband can be market-led. The key question now will be whether Ofcom can move quickly to create a regulatory framework that both enables large-scale investment and ensures effective competition???.
The BSG believes that the move to next generation broadband will be at least as important as the move from narrowband to broadband. “It will bring about a revolution in the capability and quality of services and will enable the next big development of the internet. You could think of it as the catalyst for web 3.0???.
