BT charging too much for fibre use claims Talk Talk boss
BT charging too much for fibre use claims Talk Talk boss
The £2.5 billion superfast broadband network will be left empty if more competition is not stimulated in the market, according Talk Talk.
The ISP’s chief executive, Dido Harding, claims that the current high prices charged by BT make using the cables installed by BT too expensive for many providers. She claims that the use of the fibre network will cost almost double the use of old copper telephone wires. In response, Ofcom needs to ensure that more is done to bring down these costs and to encourage a range of providers to use the new fibre cables, she claims.
Ms Hardin wants Ofcom to launch a consultation period this year to tackle the issue of BT’s pricing strategy. She told The Guardian: "We need to get a move on otherwise the country will have spent a lot of money building infrastructure which no one is using.
“We must start a consultation this year on the regulatory framework structure once build-out is complete."
The costs involved are steep to say the least. ISPs who have put their own electronic equipment in BT’s exchanges can pay £7.28 per customer per month to resell the copper wire broadband. To resell the fibre broadband, they have to pay an additional £6.90 per month per customer – making it almost double the cost. These prices are set to be imposed in 2015 once the fibre cable has been rolled out.
The fibre broadband will offer speeds of around 80 Mpbs, compared with the copper speeds averaging at around 7.6 Mbps.
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