The telecoms industry has failed to respond to the needs
of the business community, according to new Communications
Management Association (CMA) chairman Carolyn Kimber, who has
called for comms regulator Ofcom and the government to
act.
Opening the CMA’s annual conference today, Kimber called
for greater collaboration between
Ofcom and
the business community, and criticised the industry’s performance
when it came to business needs.
She used the issues of mobile roaming costs, inadequate
broadband access and next generation network uncertainties to
illustrate her point. She said slow progress in all three areas was
hindering the green and flexible working agendas of business.
Kimber said, “When we ask for reasonable and affordable tariffs
for international roaming we are not advocating more international
travel. We are simply saying that there are times when business
users have no choice but to travel, and they must be able to enjoy
all the benefits of the trends towards fixed mobile
convergence.”
The EC plans to cap the amounts mobile operators can charge each
other for handling calls from customers from different companies,
but mobile operators have been slow to reduce the call charges for
customers roaming on their own networks.
On broadband, Kimber said, “By the time we wake up to the
business case for fibre to the home, we will be 15 years behind
international competitors who are doing it now.
“We must ask what the poverty of shoestring broadband is doing
for the UK economy and the green agenda.”
The CMA’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 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 needed it.
As a result of CMA pressure last year over next generation
services - particularly those connected to BT’s roll-out of its
£10bn 21st Century Network - the dialogue between business users
and suppliers had improved, said Kimber, but there were still
issues around timescales, equipment compatibility and security that
needed to be resolved, she said.
Kimber appealed to Ofcom and the government to recognise that
the needs of business enterprises – large and small – must be
properly reflected in public policy.
Telecom managers still unhappy about broadband access
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