BT gifted rural broadband monopoly

The UK Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee has blamed the government of failing to give meaningful competition in the management of its 1.2 billion Euro rural broadband programme designed to help get broadband to areas, mainly rural.

Public Accounts Chairman, Margaret Hodge, said that since the Committee’s hearing in July 2013, when 26 of the 44 contracts to deliver the programme were with BT, all remaining contracts had now also gone to the telco. “Despite our warnings last September, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has allowed poor cost transparency and the lack of detailed broadband roll-out plans to create conditions whereby alternative suppliers may be crowded out,” she added.

She said that whilst BT claims it is making further concessions, this is not impacting on rural communities. “Local authorities are still contractually prevented from sharing information to see if they are securing best terms for the public money they spend. Communities can still not access the detailed data they need to understand whether they will be covered by BT’s scheme in their area. Other broadband providers might be squeezed out of the rural market by BT’s actions,” she warned.

According to Hodge, BT’s monopoly position should have been a red flag for the DCMS. “But we see the lack of transparency on costs and BT’s insistence on non-disclosure agreements as symptomatic of BT’s exploiting its monopoly position to the detriment of the taxpayer, local authorities and those seeking to access high speed broadband in rural areas,” she stated.

The Committee recommends that the DCMS should work urgently with all local authorities to publish detailed mapping of their implementation plans, enabling searches down to full (7-digit) postcode level. The information should include speed of service, as soon as that is available.

It also recommends that the DCMS should collect, analyse and publish costs data on deployment costs in the current programme, to inform its consideration of bids from suppliers under the next round of funding.

Source; http://cablequest.org/news/international-news/item/4521-bt-gifted-rural-broadband-monopoly.html
Source: http://cablequest.org/news/international-news/item/4521-bt-gifted-rural-broadband-monopoly.html