All’s well that ends well, and where rural broadband provision is concerned it has ended extremely well for BT.
The government has handed over £1.2bn in local contracts subsidising countryside internet provision to BT, without – according to the Public Accounts Committee – doing enough to encourage competition for the deals.
And now Oxfordshire and Dorset country councils have slapped down proposed local broadband schemes in favour of bringing in BT as the sole provider of broadband provision as well.
The schemes, comprising local homeowners who put up their own cash to fund localised rollouts, claim they would have required far less subsidy than BT wants, and are rightly indignant.
Yet BT, now the beneficiary of a not insignificant sum of public cash, still had the gall to warn of the dangers of one locally-run scheme becoming too dominant:
"A key consideration is that any network which benefits should be open to all ISPs to use. That way, local monopolies are avoided and customers have choice," a spokesperson said.
Erm, what about your own monopoly, BT?
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What monopoly? They reply (in my head).
Has the government forgotten that British Telecom is no longer state-operated? I know the Tories are great fans of selling off anything not nailed down, so it would appear remiss of them not to remember this little tidbit of info.
Certainly it’s a huge failure to have not sought value for money in this instance.
