Vtesse News

Hertford 3rd February 2009

Vtesse Networks encouraged by the Conservative’s plans to facilitate pervasive deployment of super-fast broadband.

Vtesse Networks, the UK’s leading Next Generation Telecommunications provider question the Digital Britain report assertion that one third of the population (“the final third”) should be satisfied with a broadband experience of “up to 2Mbit” and have long argued that with suitable regulatory intervention, super fast broadband services could be made available to the majority.

The Conservative proposals include allowing BT’s competitors to share its under-utilised underground ducts and overground poles which would  greatly reduce the cost of fibre optic network deployment to final third communities .

The Conservatives also promise regulatory support for an accelerated deployment and Vtesse observe that were this support to include reducing business rates on 3rd party operators fibres deployed in BT ducts to the same level as that paid by BT itself, the success of the program might be further underpinned.

There will be areas, even with such intervention, where the combined effects of increased competition and regulatory intervention will still not underpin commercial deployment and in these cases Vtesse agrees that a proportion of the BBC licence fee would provide support that might find more ready consumer acceptance than current proposals.

....ends

Note to editors: Under the current rating system it is estimated that Vtesse pays fibre rates of between 20 and 40 times those paid by BT. Furthermore, BT does not get charged at all for additional fibre used, whereas Vtesse and other operators are charged by the kilometre. This bears particularly harshly on rural areas where the distances to reach settlements are far greater than the equivalent in urban areas.