BT admits its ADSL service is 'mediocre'

BT Retail supremo Pierre Danon seemed to be facing up to grim reality at iDate Telecoms, Media, Internet 2001 in Montpellier, today.

The BT Retail chief and BT group director today admitted that his company's ADSL service levels were "mediocre" and that its subscriber totals were "disappointing".

Danon told 700 European delegates that BT accepted that its service level for ADSL was mediocre, and that it was disappointed with its ADSL subcriber total - 62,000 compared with NTL's 80,000.

"NTL and Telewest are doing very well - the bundling of telphony, internet and pay TV is a strong offering with a strong appeal," he said.

He admitted that as well as falling behind cable in the UK, BT trailed Europe badly. Danon said this was because the UK had cheap unmetered narrowband access and because there was a tough regulator in the UK.

"But these are excuses," he said. "We're not happy with our performance in terms of numbers. We need to work on our costs and work on our performance. Yes, you can criticise BT."

Danon claimed that BT would like to give away ADSL for free - if only to see off the challenge of cable - but that Oftel wouldn't let it.

In a lively interjection, Philip T. Barton, chief executive at EVUA Ventures, the European VPN Users Association, told Danon that there was a great demand for ADSL in the UK.

He told delegates that the UK would rank in the middle in Europe in delivering broadband, instead of nearly last, if BT had delivered with ADSL.

"The reality of the situation is that the quality of the service is less than good, and the only reason the UK doesn't have a million ADSL subscribers [like Germany] is BT."

Danon replied that he accepted that in terms of service he recognised BT was mediocre, but added that the tendancy in the UK to target BT was one of the problems, especially when it came to unbundling of the local loop.

"I've been a director of the BT board for over a year and I've seen no sign of BT dragging its feet. [The slow pace of unbundling] is a situation we have to put up with too.

"We would be happy to sell local loop - it would be money in the kitty for BT Wholesale - but it hasn't been a success for a number of reasons."