BT’s chief executive Gavin Patterson trumpeted its broadband goals, while rivals called for a shake-up to the UK incumbent’s local networks unit, a key argument as regulators deliberate BT’s bid for EE, the UK’s largest mobile operator.

Patterson said the incumbent supported the UK government’s target of a new universal broadband speed of between 5Mb/s and 10Mb/s.

BT is developing new technologies including wireless-to-the-cabinet and long-reach VDSL to reach remote locations with faster broadband, he said. And the operator will introduce satellite broadband service before year-end, Patterson added.

The operator also plans to go beyond the government’s target of 95 per cent premises covered by fibre, while Patterson said a new ultrafast service of between 300Mb/s and 500 Mb/s would pass 10 million homes and small businesses by end-2020.

Patterson was speaking at the BT-organised Delivering Britain’s Digital Future conference.

The speech follows a letter to the Financial Times in which rivals called for the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to investigate Openreach, BT’s local-networks unit. The likes of Sky, Vodafone and TalkTalk want Openreach spun off from its parent.

The letter, which was also signed by the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self Employed, attacked the quality of BT’s broadband and called for radical reform.

Separately, mobile operators have expressed concern that an operator upon whom they are so reliant for their backbone networks should become a competitor with the acquisition of EE. BT’s takeover of EE is being scrutinised by the CMA.

Reaching out
Openreach’s chief executive Joe Garner admitted at the conference that it had more work to do on service, while pointing to the progress already made.

Garner said Openreach exceeded all 60 Ofcom service standards in 2014/15, as well as hiring 3,000 additional engineers, cutting installation wait times, fixing faults faster and halving complaints.

He also said Openreach is aiming to exceed by six per cent Ofcom’s 2017 minimum standards for delivering new connections on-time.

The unit also launched a new service called View My Engineer which gives customers progress updates via text plus their engineer’s name and mobile number.

Interestingly, he said Openreach is open to deal directly with end-customers, subject to regulatory review by Ofcom. Currently, users only deal with their retail broadband provider, and not Openreach.