It has been revealed that Ofcom, the official regulator of the broadband industry, will not stand in the way of British Telecom’s fibre-optic network project to roll out superfast broadband to 10,000,000 UK homes by 2012. The company is set to spend£1.5 billion on the project although there had been a suggestion it could be delayed if Ofcom had placed unnecessary barriers to a reasonable return on investment.
Now that the project has officially been endorsed by Ofcom an initial 10 million homes across the UK should be experiencing 100Mbps Internet speeds by 2012. While Ofcom is willing to give British Telecom certain discretion with regards to the charging structure and potential return on investment there will be rules laid down in relation to the rollout of superfast broadband in the UK which will be published next month.
Finally after what seems like an eternity we now stand on the verge of a nationwide superfast broadband network which will allow UK businesses and UK consumers to compete with the best in the world. Not only will the network benefit BT broadband user but it will also allow the likes of Virgin Broadband, Sky Broadband and other broadband providers to increase their speeds by using the British Telecom network.