BT broadband reaches 5m customers

BT has announced its five millionth broadband customer: chip shop worker Elizabeth Patterson of East Kilbride, Glasgow. She has won "a luxury trip to Vancouver to watch the Winter Olympics", says BT. The company reckons there are more than 14 million ADSL broadband customers in the UK, and says it is spending £1.5 billion (Dh8.79 billion) to lay fibre past 10 million homes covering 40 per cent of the UK population by 2012.

BT chief executive Ian Livingston said the fibre roll-out was six months ahead of schedule and would pass four million homes by the end of 2010. This means more homes should have access to faster broadband for the London Olympics. However, he pointed out this was without any support from the UK government.

"If you look around the world, several governments are supporting the roll-out of fibre broadband. There's still a debate in the UK — which is fine, but we need our politicians to decide how much of a priority fibre broadband is. BT is the only company currently planning to invest large sums in this area but we can only go so far with our shareholder's money."

As I never tire of pointing out, the need for fibre to the home has been obvious for at least two decades — Ian Mackintosh made the case, and analysed the economic implications, in his book, Sunrise Europe, published in 1986. BT and several clueless governments have been making the right mouth movements but doing nothing effective ever since.

Presumably there's action now because BT is coming under pressure from Virgin Media, which has been installing fibre optic cables to the street, if not the home. However, Ofcom's [Office of Communications] latest update, for this year's second quarter, says: "BT remained the largest residential and SME broadband supplier in Q2 2009, with its market share increasing by 0.2 percentage points to 26.6 per cent, its highest level since 2001."

Another driver is the need to support the rapidly growing market for internet video, which in the UK is being driven by the BBC's iPlayer.

— Guardian News & Media Ltd