quote:

---

BT chief executive Ian Livingstone defended his firm's limited plans for faster broadband today, arguing there is not enough demand for fibre to the home to justify its cost.

He was appearing on a panel with his opposite numbers at Virgin Media and O2 at the Digital Britain summit this morning.

"Of course a Ferrari is faster than a Ford," Livingstone said. "But most people are happy with a Ford."

---

quote:

---

Based on our four years of experience deploying and selling FiOS, I thought I'd offer our own observation about the bear's view:

It's near-sighted.

The facts are that our return on FiOS will exceed our cost of capital. When looking at the economics of the investment, we see significant financial benefits from maintenance expense savings

When we looked at FiOS, we looked not only at what was financially prudent today, but also where communications and entertainment technology was headed tomorrow -- and 10 years from now. We looked at how customer demands would change and grow.

Our fiber network will create new uses. We didn't build it to provide plain old cable TV service. Instead, it's our view that customers will increasingly demand the types of wireless and fiber broadband services that are just now beginning to emerge.

---

quote:

---

In these bad economic times the Dutch government will stimulate a fast introduction of glass fibre. That said under secretary of state Frank Heemskerk at the first national glass fibre conference Light my Fibre at my hometown Almere.

---