BT Promises Better Broadband, As Profit Climbs 7%

BT added 104,000 new customers in the second quarter of the year, and the group’s annual profits went up by seven percent.

Discussing the results Joe Garner, recently-appointed CEO of BT’s OpenReach infrastructure division, promised action on rural broadband beyond the end of the government-backed Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) scheme, and new technologies designed to push fibre closer to the consumers and to eke out the last drop of speed from the final copper connections.

Growth on target

BT’s revenue was £4.35 billion, down two percent on last year, but the profits were up seven percent to £638 million.

Within that, the TV business helped a ten percent boost to the consumer deivision, while demand for faster broadband also increased profits. BT beat analysts’ estimates, but also extended its lead over rivals BSkyB and TalkTalk in traditional broadband.

Broadband issues

Responding to criticism of BT’s broadband provision in Tech City, Garner said businesses there should accept they might have to pay for BT’s Ethernet service at £250 per month, instead of criticising the failings of cheaper services designed for consumers: “Wouldn’t you rather have a symmetric service instead of hanging off a consumer service?” he asked.

In fact, trials in London would address the issue of increasing business demands, as well as the troubles of rural broadband users, he said. BT is testing fibre-to-the-remote-node (FTTRN) which extends its fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) rollout, taking fibre connections to smaller cabinets closer to the end customer, who can then expect to see faster speeds.

BT hopes to be able to support up to 1Gbps speeds on runs of copper cable up to 1 few hundred metres, by combining two new technologies, G-Fast and vectoring. The 1Gbps is in fact a combination of upstream and downstream speeds – and the technique could offer the possibility of increasing upload speeds.

“We see upload speeds as our edge over the Virgin network,” he said, commenting that customers are increasingly putting material online and want faster upload speeds, perhaps even symmetrical with the same upload and download speeds.. “G-Fast lends itself to symmetrical services,” he said.

BT has promised to put £50 million into urban broadband, adding around 400,000 homes to its superfast network, but is still deciding which areas to bless with the new speed, said Garner.

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