BT accused of dragging its feet on full-fibre broadband

BT has been accused of failing to invest enough money into the UK’S full-fibre broadband network by the boss of a rival telecoms company.

Rajiv Datta, chief executive of Nexfibre, which is building its own fullfibre network, accused BT of behaving like a “typical monopoly” by failing to invest quickly enough in the next generation of broadband technology.

He said: “When you have somebody that has the dominant market share and has had the benefits of being the incumbent all these years, not investing in that core infrastructure is a typical behaviour of a monopoly.” BT’S infrastructure arm, Open reach, is spending £15bn to connect 26m homes to full-fibre broadband.

However, Mr Datta claimed Openreach had only recently begun to accelerate its roll- out as a result of competition from start-up rivals such as his business and Cityfibre.

He said: “I think Openreach has seen the impact of that in terms of customers valuing full-fibre and, frankly, moving and transitioning away from that historical, legacy infrastructure.

“There was no incentive for them to invest, there was no real competition. They’re now sensing that there is some competition and that’ s gotten them moving.”

Nexfibre, which is jointly owned by Liberty Global, Telefónica and French private equity firm Infra via, has outlined a £4.5bn plan to build a fullfibre network reaching 5m homes by the end of 2026.

It has pledged to spend £1bn this year alone as it ramps up building in areas that include Wales and Scotland.

Mr Datta said Nexfibre would build more this year than any other company apart from Openreach.

The telecoms chief said he hoped to “drive a competitive dynamic with the one incumbent that we have in this country for a long period of time”. BT is leading the roll- out of the UK’S new broadband network, but is facing growing competition from challenger firms known as altnets. However, the rise in interest rates has put pressure on the debt-funded roll-out programmes of start-up rivals, fuelling expectations that many companies will collapse and be bought out by larger rivals.

Mr Datta insisted that Nexfibre was resilient to the challenges.

Nexfibre is a wholesale infrastructure provider, supplying full-fibre networks. It has an exclusive partnership with Virgin Media O2 to provide broadband services to customers