20th Jul 2016 13:10
LONDON (Alliance News) - BT Group PLC's broadband network suffered outages in several areas of the UK Wednesday, hitting around 10% of its customers' internet usage, according to the company.
BT attributed the fault to power issues at one of its internet connection partners' sites in London, and the fault was reported fixed in the early afternoon.
The outage comes just a day after a committee of UK lawmakers accused BT of "significantly under investing" in its Openreach network infrastructure division which handles the installation and upkeep of much of the UK's broadband connections.
The committee said BT had exploited its dominant position managing broadband network infrastructure in the UK to make strategic decisions which "favour the group's priorities and interests". In doing so, the committee said BT is likely to have harmed shareholder value and customer benefits.
It suggested that BT must rectify this issue, or face a break-up.
In response, BT said it was "disappointed to be criticised, having invested more than GBP1 billion a year in infrastructure when the UK was emerging from recession and rival companies invested little".
"Openreach investment is 30% higher than it was two years ago and it will grow again this year. We?re already pumping in hundreds of millions of pounds of extra money and we?ve committed to invest a further six billion pounds over the next three years," BT said in the statement.
Whilst BT agreed that service levels "have to improve", it argued that it is hitting all of UK telecoms regulator Ofcom's service targets and is "determined to exceed them given customer expectations are rising all the time".
"We are in discussions with Ofcom about increasing the autonomy of Openreach and we're hopeful that a settlement is possible that will meet the concerns of the committee. Separating Openreach from BT would lead to less investment, not more, and would fatally undermine the aims of the committee," BT said in the statement.
Shares in BT were down 1.4% at 387.05 pence Wednesday.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; [email protected]; @HanaSSAllNews
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