Posts by nick2nick

BT in £52m contract tussle: West Country bumpkins hit with broadband delay

Re: BT holding back rural services

Actually you put a small amount of the money you will save into 'lobbying' OFCOM and BDUK and make sure you are the only one that can win the tenders. "Corruption in big business in the UK" shocker!!!!

BT wins another HUGE gov-funded rural broadband deal

Re: Aim low to ensure disappointment

"only BT has the skills and resources to put forward meaningful bids", unfortunately not the case. The bidding process was biased in such a way that only BT could win, that is why they are winning all the business.

They are also the only bidder. Fujitsu has pulled out, but is staying in as a favour to BT and BDUK to make it slightly less obvious it is a stitch up

Fujitsu £2bn broadband project throttled at both ends

Where do the numbers come from

I don't think BT is ever going to be the right answer as their margins need to be too high to cover their costs (including the huge pensions liability)

However I have to come to their defence on one point. Where you say "The telecoms giant failed to spot Fujitsu's declaration that it would invest up to £2bn in the project." That is because in the press release (http://www.fujitsu.com/uk/news/pr/fs_20110413.html) it doesn't mention any figures at all!

Except where they say "provides an opportunity for any community or local authority looking to access a proportion of the £530 million earmarked by the UK Government" and a Vaizey quote "That is why the Government is investing over £500m in taking superfast broadband to everyone"

The other figures all seem to source back so a single FT article where they say "The Japanese information technology services group said its network would cost between £1.5bn and £2bn to build, and depended on Fujitsu securing at least £500m of public funds"

As this seems to base from a conversation with an unnamed Fujitsu employee then the word "would" could easily be "could" and of course they have no chance at all of securing £500M from the Govt (just as BT won't - it said it could do 90% coverage of the UK with the "fake fibre" that is Infinity if thay gave the £530M to them).

And the "No Chance" comes from the fact that there will be lots of small procurements for each council that gets a chunk of the pot (mabe £10M a time) most of which will be impossible for a monolith such as Fujitsu to economically bid.