Openreach and critics locked in debate over faster broadband

Ask someone if they want broadband 35 times faster than the average and they will answer in the affirmative — probably with the addition of a few choice words regarding the service they receive at present. Like disgruntled football fans, British broadband users are not short of opinions about their internet speeds.

The industry has been embroiled in a very public fight about the state of broadband and what needs to be done. BT, and its engineering arm Openreach, say Britain has some of the best internet speeds in Europe. Its detractors, including Vodafone, TalkTalk and Sky, who compete with BT but rely on access to Openreach’s network, argue the country risks falling behind in the race to build networks that offer the speeds needed to support autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence. With the EU looking to set the bar for minimum broadband speeds much higher than being contemplated in Britain, fears have started to build after the Brexit vote that Britain is trailing the pack and may never catch up. The argument about the state of the market has become concentrated on the length of copper wire that runs from the point that fibre optic cables stop to the customer’s door — roughly 7 per cent of the entire length of a broadband connection. BT’s critics want old copper lines to be abandoned and fibre optic cables run straight to the home — something BT is unwilling to pay for.