Broadband Britain: Revolution is in the air

When BT's CEO Ben Verwaayen spoke to silicon.com last week (http://www.silicon.com/a55481 ) he re-ignited a debate that refuses to die down.

He said BT puts customers first. Some of you disagreed. On broadband he said: "I'd say 80 per cent are happy, 10 per cent are so-so, 10 per cent are unhappy. And those 10 per cent are very vocal, and they're right. We have to step up and understand what [the problem] is." And some of you - mostly the final 10 per cent, it must be said - agreed.

Here, following our first round of reaction (http://www.silicon.com/a55524 ), we present Broadband Britain: Best of Reader Comments II...

BT and Big Business
BT, like all the other great companies, have forgotten the order of importance of Customer, Employee and Shareholders. A past Chairman of Mitsubushi said in a radio interview: "The customer should always be number one, employee should be number two and thirdly the shareholders." He reasoned, satisfied customers will always come back or recommend, you have sales growth, sales growth creates work for employees and if they deliver the goods profit is made for the shareholders. Mitsubushi is still going!!
Name withheld

Cart before the Horse
BT`s policy of waiting for what are, effectively, orders for ADSL before enabling the exchange is like putting the cart before the horse.

Imaging if BSkyB waited until a few hundred thousand people had expressed an interest in digital satellite before bunging the bird up there. We'd all still be waiting now.

BT should bite the bullet and enable rural exchanges NOW, or turn the local loop over to a non-profit organisation!
Andy Baxman

Why not Cable?
Do the cable companies offer any more access than BT?
Consistent with Blair`s view of a `wired-up Britain`, perhaps a strategic organisation needs to be set up to provide both copper and cable broadband, thus meeting B.Liar`s goal. I believe that `wired-up Britain` will remain a pipe dream unless a rich telco, or an independent body, gets in there and takes it from BT and the cable companies.
Iain Benger-Stevenson

Not Thatcher's fault
If BT had been privatised five years earlier we would have been further down the road with Broadband everywhere. No competition makes BT a lazy boy. If BT was still the old GPO we would still be line sharing and using bakelite handsets. BT should have been split similar to the Gas, Electric and Water Utilities. Then we would have had a major force dealing with the main national infrastructure.
Ron Murray

How rural do we have to be?
They won't supply broadband in our area. We are in the Leeds - Bradford Conurbation, whilst I admit the `Dark Satanic Mills` closed down thirty years ago, we could not be called rural.
Graham Hart

Rural? Are you sure
What's this? Rural areas are being denied broadband through BT's greed? Time for a reality check I think.

This business is right at the heart of the Thames Valley, smack in the middle of the high-tech corridor bordered by Reading, Bracknell and Maidenhead. Microsoft, Sage, Oracle and countless other luminaries are spitting distance away.
And can we get wired BT Broadband? Can we ********
Geoff Twibell