Organisations have already voiced their criticisms regarding the
situation, with CLA (Country Land and Business
Alliance) saying that the Government's "over-reliance on fibre
optic" was another reason why the plan was running at a snail-like
pace.
To refresh your memory, the UK Government's
BDUK office has set aside £530m
to deploy superfast broadband (25Mbps or more) to 90 per cent
within every county and basic broadband (at least 2Mbps) to the
remaining 10 per cent.
Malcolm Corbett, chief executive of the
Independent Networks Co-operative Association, was reported as
saying:
"There are issues - and a whole
range of people have been in negotiations with BDUK, but [BT being
the exception] all except for Fujitsu came to the conclusion that
it wasn't really going to work for them as things stood."
"It doesn't look like there's
going to be a significant degree of competition. In some areas, BT
will be the only company involved."
Experts have suggested that these doubts are unlikely to cause
the whole scheme to collapse, however underlined that
further delays are to be expected especially
considering that BTOpenreach is ready to deploy away - but how long
would it take Fujitsu to get the works done?
