Ofcom will not get in the way of BT’s ROI on 21CN broadband

BT will now not face any obstacles from Ofcom in its plan to spend £1.5 billion pounds on its super-fast broadband network, 21CN. BT’s superfast broadband offers a speed of up to 100Mbps, more than 30 times higher than the current UK average broadband speed of 3.6Mbps. Ofcom’s CEO Ed Richards, in an interview with the Financial Times, has said that Ofcom, “will not be a barrier to this kind of investment”. BT’s CEO Ian Livingston, said that BT was making a lot of progress with Ofcom on the principles of its planned regulatory regime. Still don’t understand what 21CN is? Click here for the answer.

On announcing their plans for 21CN last July, BT declared that it would only push ahead with its plan for their fibre optic broadband internet if Ofcom set terms that allowed it a decent ROI on the service, so with this now being the case BT has push on with their plans. There was some spectism over the issue as BT's investment case rested on the hope that it would be able to charge rival telecoms groups for using its superfast network. Some analysts believe that this investment is of a high risk as they question whether consumers will be willing to pay a premium on using superfast broadband.