Official calls on BT to stop restrictions on high speed broadband

It was recently announced that communications giant BT had decided to find areas of the country where there was a high enough demand for high speed broadband for it to consider upgrades, but one official has called on the telecoms giant to stop these restrictions.

It was announced recently that the telecoms and broadband giant BT had decided to look into which areas of the UK had the highest demand for broadband so that it could determine where it would be most viable for it to launch its high speed service. The company said that it would restrict the service to exchanges where there were at least one thousand residents.

However, one industry official has said that BT should not be restricting access to its high speed broadband service in this way, stating that it also needs to consider the broadband needs of smaller communities. BT said recently that it would choose five winning exchange areas to conduct its upgrades. It said that in order to upgrade areas that were not commercially viable it would need public sector support.

Patrick Goss from Techradar said that whilst this initiative could provide BT with a lot of publicity it was wrong of the company to exclude communities that had fewer than one thousand residents, who would benefit from higher speed broadband as much as areas with a larger number of residents.

He said that upgrading five winning exchanges was not very many, and added that BT should be “putting up the cash to reach the smaller communities that desperately need good internet access”.

Source – Cable