TheCommunications Management
Association’s annual member survey shows there
is still dissatisfaction among companies over broadband
access.
The survey, based on responses from 355 of the CMA’s members,
showed that 41% of businesses and public sector organisations could
not get broadband where they needed it.
This figure was down from the 54% last year, but will still be a
disappointment to BT and the government, which claim that broadband
is available to 99% of the population.
The 41% who say they don’t have adequate access to broadband are
mainly referring to “vanilla” or standard broadband. When it comes
to specific business broadband services like SDSL, which offers the
same sending speed as access speed, 73% said they couldn’t get SDSL
where they need it.
On broadband competition, 52% said the creation of BT Openreach
had stimulated competition in the UK. The Openreach division is
designed to deliver the same broadband infrastructure service to
BT’s rivals as its own companies.
Respondents said ntl:Telewest Business and Verizon Business were
among the best business services providers to use. For mobile
services, Vodafone and T-Mobile were ahead of the others.
When it came to adopting unified voice and data communications,
enterprise mobility and teleworking were the key drivers, with 41%
citing them, closely followed by collaboration (34%).
On mobile access, 68% this year said connected handheld devices
were a key factor in their communications and networks strategies -
up from 55% last year.
Regards future spending, 91% said spending on IP services would
either increase again or stay the same in the next 12 months.
Cisco was seen as the strongest IT brand among CMA members,
closely followed by Microsoft.
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