BT admits tardiness implementing new technology

British Telecom (BT) has admitted that it is slow to catch onto the latest technologies despite having a research and development budget of £300m a year, according to Stewart Davies, BT Labs' director of advanced communications.

Although he believes that BT's number one priority is quality, he explained that the company would only launch services like ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) when they were of the highest standard.

"While you might say we've been slow, we want to make sure that when we do launch - and we will be launching in the not too distant future - then we actually have a top quality service for our customers."

But yesterday, when BT Labs announced the end of its ADSL trials, rivals said the full service was not up to scratch.

Bob Jones, chairman of network supplier, Equiinet said: "It is typical of BT to raise expectations about the introduction of a new technology, and then dash people's hopes. They've just announced a reduction in the data rate and an increase in price for their ADSL service [see http://www.silicon.com/a33496 ]. The reason I'm a bit distressed about this is that it makes Britain immediately disadvantaged compared to the rest of Europe."

Explaining that the consumer is always hungry for more bandwidth, Davies added that BT is working on supplying what's required while also looking at ways to reduce costs.

The full Stewart Davies interview is available on Silicon's corporate telecoms channel [http://www.silicon.com/corptelecoms ].