Driving Mr Alexander

Tuesday 25 September 2001 17:26:00 by Andrew Ferguson

The Register has an article from the E-Commerce Minister Douglas Alexander. Douglas talks about the industry having to drive down the prices of broadband - citing the cable companies as an example to BT of what is a fair price for broadband access. It's worth noting that the cable broadband services are only cheap for home users, once you get to services that provide static IP and freedom for hosting the price is back up there with ADSL.

Interestingly the minister has grasped that BTopenworld and BTwholesale are seperate and says the wholesale side needs to look at lowering the costs to the 180 odd ADSL re-sellers and that costs should be driven down for LLU lines.

Douglas also says that the challenge is for BT to introduce lower specification products at lower price points to allow consumers a smoother path upto broadband. This could be taken to mean ISDN is over priced still and perhaps 128kbps unmetered packages should be say £25, i.e. just £10 above dialup unmetered packages OR that perhaps options like 256kbps/128kbps downstream/upstream ADSL service at around £25 retail price should be considered.