Advanced Television

Britain ‘will have best broadband in Europe’

November 11, 2011

BT has claimed that Britain is on target to meet the Government’s ambition for the country to have the ‘best broadband in Europe’ by 2015.

Sean Williams, the Group Director of Strategy Policy and Portfolio for BT, said that “We will be top of the major league, certainly if not by 2015 then by very soon after”.

Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, has said that the UK will have the best broadband in Europe by 2015, enabling consumers and businesses to transmit large files and stream television, music or movies. Civil servants, however, have subsequently been criticised for producing a set of measurements that do not rigidly define what terms that might mean.

Williams told the Westminster eForum event that although the ambitions were “challenging”, the UK’s roadmap, working with Virgin, Fujitsu and others, was likely to achieve the target, if Britain was compared to its peers in terms of geography and other defining characteristics.

He added that half of all customers offered super-fast broadband, with speeds above 24mbps, went on to subscribe to the service. He said BT’s business model anticipated a total take-up of super-fast services from just one in five customers. “The only thing holding us back is our capacity,” he said, although he added that planning and road works constraints could be eased to improve broadband roll-out.

Categories: Articles, Broadband