Fujitsu takes next gen Internet services to rural Britain

JAPANESE TECHNOLOGY GIANT Fujitsu is hoping to steal a lead on BT by working with a number of firms to bring high speed, next generation Internet services to the rural UK.

The firm is working with Virgin Media, Talktalk and Cisco on its plans, which will see it install fibre to those hard to reach places that so far are untouched by broadband, and presumably, BT.

In fact, the firm described its services as an alternative to BT's Openreach proposition, and passed a collection plate around community and local authorities that might want to invest some of the government's promised £530 million in high speed net funds somewhere other than with the incumbent telco.

While Cisco is on hand to provide networking and routing technology, Virgin Media and Talktalk are involved because they intend to adopt the Fujitsu wholesale products and turn them into services for their users. Other broadband providers will also be able to access the network, Fujitsu added.

Welcoming the announcement, UK Communications Minister Ed Vaizey said, "The collaboration between these companies was exactly the sort of ambition and innovation the Government wanted to stimulate by removing barriers to broadband rollout. Fujitsu and their industry partners are pledging a substantial investment in the UK and it represents a deep commitment to the future success of this country."

In the main, Fujitsu will concentrate on running fibre optic cabling to the home, rather than local street cabinets. It explained that this will let it offer high speed connections from day one, and added that these have the potential to offer connection bandwidths of up to 10Gbps and beyond.

Investment will be aimed at the areas with particularly bad connections, and Fujitsu said that it will support any local initiatives for dynamic and flexible Internet.

"There is a unique opportunity for the UK to re-establish itself as a world leader by having the world's most advanced fibre network.," said Duncan Tait, CEO of Fujitsu UK and Ireland. "If done correctly this can be a key vehicle to accelerate recovery in the UK and bring genuine choice to generations of communities starved of participating fully in the UK economy."

BT, the alternative provider in all this, welcomed the competition, and particularly the news that another company will share the burden of upgrading the UK infrastructure. However, in a statement it suggested that there were some gaps in the announcement, which hopefully Fujitsu will address.

"Openreach engineers have been working round the clock to bring the benefits of fibre broadband to millions of homes and businesses across the UK but we have always said that rural areas are challenging to reach without public funds," the firm said.

"Today's announcement gives no detail of the investment these companies are prepared to make - in contrast to BT's publicly committed £2.5 billion. It is important that the companies concerned make it clear that they are willing to invest material sums rather than just spend public money in what could be a multi-billion project."

BT said that it hoped that Virgin would confirm that its infrastructure will be as open as its own, and will let all companies contribute to a fibre future, adding, "They do need to be clear that this will be on an open, equal access basis as BT has committed. We do look forward to Virgin confirming that they will open their infrastructure to enable all companies to have the opportunity to invest in a new fibre future." µ