Consumer Escort

The government’s proposed 50 p broadband tax has created doubts in the minds of BT, which feels that the target of providing fibre optic broadband service across the UK with the said fund would be not feasible.

In a meeting at the company headquarters in London, Olivia Garfield, the Director of Strategy and Portfolio, said that she was doubtful regarding the progress of this broadband UK plan with the proposed fund. She said that the maximum that the government can hope to achieve from the fund was about 80 to 85 percent coverage instead of the targeted 100%. She urged the government to adopt a more realistic approach towards the issue.

During the press conference, Garfield also disclosed that BT was not a part of the decision process to impose the broadband tax and was unaware of it till about twenty minutes before the launch of the Digital Britain Report.

BT has now resorted to Ofcom to provide it with a clear picture of the allocation of the Next Generation Funds amongst companies like BT and Virgin Media for the project and they expressed dissatisfaction over the unavailability of information. The Parliament has also initiated an inquiry into the viability of the Next Generation Fund and about the practical aspects of the recommendations put forward by the Digital Britain Report.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 10:11 am and is filed under Consumer Planet, Online Telecommunication Resources, Tech + Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.