How likely is it that BT will make good on its announcement that “up to 10 million” residential customers will be able to access super-fast broadband, courtesy of its optical fibre rollout, by 2012? The date touted by BT is a significant one, since London will be hosting the Olympics that year. As one of the sponsors of the five-ring circus, being able to shout from the rooftops that it is the main torch carrier for optical fibre deployment in the UK will carry extra kudos.

As for the announcement being, in the words of new BT chief Ian Livingston, “a bold step” – well, hardly. There’s nothing particularly bold about responding to competition. The fact that Virgin Media is in the process of cabling up its customers with 50Mbit/s, and touting headline speeds of over twice that offered by BT's 21st Century Network, has more than a little bearing on BT’s move.

However, the big question is whether Ofcom agrees to underwrite BT’s risk in rolling out an optical fibre access network by allowing the carrier to set whatever wholesale price it sees fit. Even European commissioner Viviane Reding has said that how network owners are remunerated is vital to ensuring that next-generation access networks actually get built.

Ofcom obviously has a duty to ensure that the future users of these services do not get ripped off, so it may well prevent BT from setting the wholesale price it wants. But for the sake of the UK’s future prosperity, it must be hoped that the two sides can reach an agreement soon.