Broadband: Britain bickers while Germans march on

Germany is boasting of a huge lead over UK in the broadband market.

But the UK is not meeting the challenge because of a ingrained blame culture: BT blames unmetered narrowband access, rival telcos blame BT and the government claims it has already done its bit.

German incumbent Deutsche Telekom (DT) has unbundled 400,000 local loop lines since 1998 and now has 1.2 million DSL subscribers, according to DT executive vice president Jan Geldmacher.

That is around 20 times the subscriber levels of BTopenworld.

Speaking at Idate Telecoms, Media and Internet 2001 conference in Montpellier last week Geldmacher said uptake of broadband has been fast in Germany because customers have no other way of getting unmetered access.

'There is a big difference between the UK and Germany because in the UK there is huge penetration of flat-rate narrowband access.

BT has been quick to take up the lack of demand idea: In the UK a lot of that '[broadband] demand doesn't exist because people get that access with unmetered narrowband,' said a BT spokesman.

In July BT claimed all its local exchanges were open for co-location but only 150 broadband lines have so far been installed by rival operators.

But third party operators relying on local loop unbundling say demand is not the problem.

'There isn't any lack of demand, there is a lack of appropriate solutions that make commercial sense.

'We blame the sluggish demand on BT making the process [of sharing the local loop] complicated, frustrating and non-commercial," said Bulldog chief operating officer Peter Hall.

Colt head of regulation Paul Brisby said: 'It is all very well to say the exchanges are open for business but no one wants them, not because there's no demand but because the process is too expensive and too complicated to be workable.'

Two-thirds of Germany's 250 broadband ISPs now have their own technology in DT's exchanges, compared to a handful of firms in the UK.

ADSL for home users is also quicker in Germany, allowing download speeds of 748Kbps compared to the 512Kbps offered in the UK.

Speaking at the Montpellier conference BT Retail chief and group director Pierre Danon admitted the telco giant's ADSL service levels were 'mediocre' and its subscriber levels 'disappointing'.

He admitted BT is falling behind cable providers NTL and Telewest, with only 62,000 subscribers in comparison with their combined total of 150,000.

Danon cited unmetered narrowband access and the UK's tougher regulatory activity as the reasons for the discrepancy, though he accepted BT is open to criticism.

"We're not happy with our performance in terms of numbers. We need to work on our costs and work on our performance. Yes, you can criticise BT," he said.

Additional reporting Ian Lynch

See also:

Germany goes for an e-makeover

Government portal promotes a new image abroad  19 Sep 2002

BT admits its ADSL service is 'mediocre'

Group director bemoans poor company performance  23 Nov 2001

Energis withdraws from local loop unbundling

There's no business case for continuing the process, says company  05 Oct 2001

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