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back to article BT lobbies Welsh Assembly for superfast broadband subsidies

BT chairman Sir Michael Rake went to the Welsh Assembly on Monday, to glad-hand politicos and lobby for local government cash for deploying fibre in the pricipality. He was unfailingly spinny about why BT had come to Cardiff, but made it clear that the telco's palm needs greasing if Wales' more rural corners are to enjoy …

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  1. Pete

    As a Cardiff boy

    I will expect the Welsh Assembly to stick a massive clause on any subsidies ( subsidy?) NO PHORM. That will do me nicely otherwise they can get lost.

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  2. pctechxp

    Feck off

    Ok I live in England but I think there is something inherently wrong about the public subsidising privatre investment such as this.

    There should be a governmemt owned not for profit formed to build and operate the fibre backbone and SPs could rent links to it.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Hmm.... What prompted this?

    Is this anything to do with the WAG getting in to bed with Geo on the Fibrespeed project to fibre up Business parks in north Wales where currently there's no-one else but BT?

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    England is paying

    The Welsh assembly gets its money from English taxpayers just like the sweaties. No wonder England is so behind, all the money is being robbed!!!

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  5. Zmodem

    meh

    BT are the last people your pay when you become unemployed. after that they wont give you a phone line again, they will have lost 50% of connections by early next year

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  6. Liam

    yup - english subsidies again

    im seriously getting pissed off with subsidising scotland and wales... when england is the shittest of the 3 now...

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  7. TeeCee Gold badge
    Stop

    @pctechxp

    I'm sure BT would be gnawing your arm off up to the shoulder if you went for that one:

    1) How it looks now: BT builds operates and owns a fibre network. BT does its damndest to keep the costs of building and operating same as low as possible to maximise the profit generated from end users.

    2) Your way: BT* builds (and bids to operate) a fibre network owned and paid for by the Government. BT does its damndest to make the build as expensive as possible (unforseen cost overruns above their nice, low bid to do same) to maximise its profit over what it has to spend to lease back bits of it to sell on to the end users. After securing the 10 year operating lease, they find that due to some build decisions the operating costs are higher than originally predicted and after renegotiation the goverment decides to double the operating fees (oh yes they will - see HMRC and the Mapeley STEPS deal for an example).

    With option 2 they get paid three times! Once for putting it together in the first place, once for running it and once for selling it on. Also you have the additional costs of the gravy-train fibre quango in the middle to cover. Who pays for the pork? That'll be us the end users then. Either by inflated lease costs driving up the retail price or in our taxes providing subsidy to the fibre quango to keep the lease costs down.

    *Who else can they get to do it?

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BT is probably the next to go

    this depression is going to deathly reap out the parasites.

    BT has become too top heavy for a while now - what we really need is just the engineers to service the equipment, local councils could do that just by employing the engineers.

    BT has quite a few unfair advantages that may mean it can cling on longer but ultimately it is not a lean mean organization, if it cannot fund the extension of a network itself it is at death's door, as people cash strip this country.

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    What about the

    Won't someone please think of the poor sheep.

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