Clock is ticking on UK broadband

BT, Virgin Media, BSkyB, Vodafone and Carphone Warehouse are among the UK’s telecoms companies meeting with Minister for Competition, Stephen Timms, at a UK broadband summit today. The aim of the get together is to address investment in broadband infrastructure. Although more than half of UK homes have broadband, many other European operators are upgrading their networks to cope with faster speeds, putting the UK in danger of slipping into the internet ‘slow lane’.

BT’s offerings are topping out at about 25Mbps at present and the company is running hot and cold on the fibre question, while Virgin is charging ahead with its own 50Mbps cable trials. Even so, other European incumbents are already moving onto networks capable of 100Mbps in the case of France Telecom, and 50Mbps in the case of Deutsche Telekom. Although the German carrier’s objections about not being able to have a regulatory holiday are probably representative of every incumbent in the industry.

There was an interesting development for national UK 3.5GHz licensee UK Broadband as well today. Ofcom has allowed it to connect to mobile devices as well as granting techical neutrality on its spectrum licence – this effectively gives the company carte blanche to start a Mobile WiMAX rollout.