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Culture minister Ed Vaizey compares incumbent’s infrastructure arm to unruly teenager, says Openreach must do better.
BT on Thursday made a slew of new ultrafast broadband commitments, a day after its infrastructure arm Openreach was lambasted by MPs.
The U.K. incumbent has announced plans to conduct G.fast trials covering 25,000 homes in Cambridgeshire and Kent, as part of its plan to use the technology to provide up to 500-Mbps broadband to 10 million premises by 2020.
BT will also trial fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) for businesses in Bradford, and it has also pledged to deploy FTTP free-of-charge to new housing developments of at least 250 houses, provided they are no further than 4.5 km from Openreach’s existing fibre network.
"I’m determined to roll out ultrafast broadband, and G.fast technology is the best way to deliver that to the majority of the U.K. as quickly as possible," said Openreach’s new CEO Clive Selley, in a statement. "We also plan to roll out significantly more fibre-to-the-premises, and we’re trialling a range of options in Bradford to use that technology increasingly in the future – wherever it makes sense."
The announcement was made a day after culture minister Ed Vaizey said there is still plenty of room for improvement at Openreach.
"I find myself a bit like a person who has been forced to adopt an unruly teenager," he said of Openreach during a parliamentary debate on Tuesday that was published online by the government.
"I go around telling my colleagues that he means well and is doing his best, but they simply tell me about the latest outrage they have suffered at his hands. That is the unfortunate position in which I find myself when it comes to Openreach customer service," he said.
Vaizey defended Openreach to an extent, reminding ministers that it is a commercial enterprise, not a national utility. He also praised the company’s response to problems caused by flooding in the north of England over Christmas.
Nevertheless, he insisted that "Openreach must do better," particularly when it comes to prominent issues that are brought to the attention of MPs.
"I dealt with a factory that had been built to be ready to open specifically on the basis of when Openreach was going to connect it, but Openreach was already a year behind schedule. That cost that factory many tens of thousands of pounds," Vaizey said.
"I had to intervene on new builds," he continued, explaining that it took 18 months of negotiation to ensure that new housing developments would be connected to superfast broadband.
"It continues to baffle me why it cannot get its act together and sort out these prominent problems," he said.
In February, Ofcom ordered changes to Openreach’s governance to make it more independent from BT, and instructed it to open up its physical fibre network to competitors. It also reserved the right to force a full separation of BT and Openreach should it be deemed necessary.
"BT has to look at what Ofcom is proposing and come to the table with credible answers," Vaizey said.
