A fully competitive broadband market could give a £22bn
boost to the UK economy by 2015, according to the Broadband
Industry Group, which was launched last week by Cable &
Wireless, Centrica, Energis, Freeserve, Tiscali and
Brightview.
The group was formed to campaign for a level playing field in the
UK broadband market, said David Stewart, director of regulatory and
public affairs at Energis.
It will campaign to persuade the regulator, Oftel, to change
wholesale rules to allow other operators' backbone networks to link
to BT exchanges and enjoy predictable pricing. A decision is
expected by early 2004.
Stewart said, "There is competition at the retail layer but no one
is able to use their own network to develop services. In narrowband
internet there are a number of different services: pay-as-you-go,
pre-paid and all-you-can-use. But in broadband everybody is
restricted to offering the same service but with a different
bill."
Ovum analyst Jan Dawson said, "This consortium is hoping to solve
the lack of innovation and true differentiation between services at
the access level with a combination of price cuts, better terms and
conditions and greater transparency."
The launch came days after e-commerce minister Stephen Timms called
for 100% broadband access in the UK by 2005.
BT chief executive Ben Verwaayen, said 100% availability is BT's
goal. BT requires users of rural exchanges to prove demand for
broadband before it will upgrade exchanges, but last week it
lowered trigger levels for more than 40% of its exchanges and said
it will make broadband available to 99% of the UK population.