Coalition government announced broadband policy - your view?

[drummer]

I agree that ofcom should be disbanded but there should be a more efficient organisation set up to enforce rules to ensure the customer gets a good deal and unscrupulous operators don't get away with ripping off the customer.

In other words, you want a "super" regulator to regulate the other regulators.

Who will regulate this "super" regulator?  Another regulator perhaps?  A "super-duper" regulator even.

I wonder who would fund this super duper-regulator - the industries or the taxpayers?

You already know the answer so I won't labour the point.

[pctech]

Needs to be tax funded so it is impartial.

Trouble with ofcom is they make so much money from the various bizarre stuff that is licenced it is not in their interest to really get tough with companies.

[gizmo71]

Needs to be tax funded so it is impartial.

Can you explain how tax funding ensures impartiality?

Playing devil's advocate, one could certainly see how government funding could result in a lack of impartiality...

[pctech]

Simple

Interview panel should be made up of the public picked at random as happens with jury service.

They should pick people that have never worked for BT for starters but do have a telecoms background (indie ISPs perhaps)

[dujas]

Although this is just a case of a company wanting some free publicity, I do agree with their statement:

Fibrestream, a community network specialist for Next Generation Internet Access (NGA) services, has called on Ofcom  to force BT into revealing either the list of postcodes for the 66% of the UK population where BT will be investing in superfast fibre optic broadband services ( FTTC  , FTTH  / P ), or the Final Third where it will not.

I do think it's crazy that Ofcom and the Government are just going to sit on their hands for the next five years, in a wait and see what BT do approach.

However a BT spokesperson told us that what is being proposed here "is not in the spirit of competition and bad for consumer choice." The operator adds that where Openreach is rolling out fibre, people have a choice of broadband providers because they're "making it available on an equivalence of access basis to all Communications Providers (CPs)."

BT continues on to say that the idea of giving small providers "effective monopolies over 30% of the UK" could run the risk of allowing those "unregulated monopolies" to charge whatever they wanted to customers, and tie residents in to "one provider forever". Ironically that is perhaps how a lot of remote residents already feel under BT, but then BT probably wouldn't even be there if there wasn't a legal obligation upon them to do it.

Full article here.

[Rik]

So BT don't think it harmful that their choosing who gets and who does not is bad. What a surprise.