BE delighted as BT prepares to share its broadband infrastructure

BT has announced it’s working towards encouraging all internet service providers to open up their own infrastructures to their competitors in an effort to increase broadband coverage across the country.

This week, BT revealed it has been in discussion with telecommunications watchdog since 2007 on the topic of letting other ISPs access its infrastructure. Ofcom is said to be supportive of the proposal, providing other ISPs also open up their infrastructures.

Speaking to the Financial Times, BT’s chief executive, Ian Livingson, commented: “Although it’s unlikely to be the silver bullet to get fibre to every home, open access to all ducts, not just ours, might help BT and others extend coverage and so we would like to see a future government support such a move.”

At the moment, rival providers have to use BT's wholesale products in order to roll out their own high-speed internet packages – a situation not all of them are happy about.

The provider is interested to see if competitor internet service providers will be as willing. However, as both Virgin Media and TalkTalk have already invested somewhat into trialling their own superfast broadband fibre networks, this may be a long shot.

An obviously chuffed Tom Williams, Head of Operations at BE Broadband, said: "The news that BT are preparing to open up so that other broadband providers can run their own high-speed broadband networks through their infrastructure will help us and other businesses better assess the case for fibre deployment. Although we will wait until BT confirms this move before revealing any of our own plans, one thing for certain is that the UK lags behind most of Europe now in terms of rolling out fibre broadband, which can’t persist for longer.

"Consumers will and have started to demand more and more speed for the broadband and I believe we are already seeing more consideration in buying behaviour in the broadband market. People are looking for non-traffic shaped connections that give them unfettered access to their digital lives, which BE currently gives them, but only the opening up of BT's infrastructure and the introduction fibre to the majority of the UK will allows this to happen, and BE will championing the case for this technology until we see it in place."

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