Virgin Media believes Fujitsu’s fibre network is better than BT’s

The competition is always fierce in the business world and the broadband service sector is no exception. Things have been pretty rough with some of the major Internet service providers (ISPs) and key players in UK’s broadband scene lately. Around April of this year, several ISPs had written to the communications minister, Ed Vaizey, complaining about how BT poses a threat to the broadband scheme that the government is planning, which is the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) project.

Virgin Media had also been vocal about its stand against BT on the BDUK project as well, saying that it would allow BT to strengthen its dominance further on the fibre networks located in rural areas. These have been claims that BT has responded to with much ire and indignation, saying that Virgin Media had no right to lecture them when it came to rural broadband.

And now, just a few weeks later, Virgin Media is speaking up yet again against BT on the BDUK matter. This time, though, the former is saying that it thinks Fujitsu’s fibre network would be the better network to rent instead of paying for space on BT’s.

Virgin is making this claim as rival providers are given access to BT’s ducts and poles for fibre delivery in the Wirral, which is the first active phase in the BDUK scheme.

So far, Fujitsu has been the only company that is competing against BT in trying to push fibre more into the UK communications network. As it stands, both BT and Fujitsu will be able to benefit from the funding that the UK government has set aside for this project.

Virgin explains the claims that they’re making about why Fujitsu’s fibre network is better than BT’s, saying: “BT only offers Generic Ethernet Access (GEA) on its fibre optic products at the moment, which means we cannot replicate what we provide across our cable infrastructure as everything needs to be converted into IP delivery.” In effect, Fujitsu’s unmanaged network will allow individual ISPs to customize the service that they’re offering. Virgin adds: “Essentially everything then fights for the same bandwidth–like how your DSL broadband will slow if BT Vision needs some of it. The architecture of Fujitsu’s infrastructure supports RFoG (Radio Frequency over Glass), which enables us to dedicate specific spectrum for each service.”

BT has yet to respond to the claims that Virgin Media has made.

Source – PC Pro UK