The government needs to regulate high-speed broadband networks to end the dominance of BT, according to rival telecoms group TalkTalk.
BT is currently responsible for rolling out the national broadband fibre network, which - according to TalkTalk - is reducing competition in the market because of charges for wholesale access to the network
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"We need to regulate fibre - and to check where the [state] money is going," Sir Charles Dunstone, founder and chairman of TalkTalk, told The Financial Times.
"There is so much government money going into subsidising higher broadband speeds but no one really knows where it is going and how it is being spent."
Sir Charles also argued that there needs to be more education about using the internet, because there are "still some seven million people in the UK who don't use broadband".
Previous directives state that BT is required to offer its rivals a regulated price for using its traditional copper broadband lines, but that isn't the case for the super-fast network the firm is rolling out across the UK. Ofcom is currently conducting a review of wholesale access to broadband that could result in regulation being introduced.
BT responded to TalkTalk's call for regulation with a statement arguing such a thing would "stall progress by driving up the price of wholesale access".
BT's fibre broadband rollout currently covers more than 19 million premises and it aims to extend its coverage to two-thirds of the UK by spring 2014.
But BT has been criticised over its claims that there's no demand for a national rollout of fibre-to-the-home broadband by lobby group FTTH Council Europe, which argues that BT is withholding a competitive service from consumers and the UK economy as a whole.
"[The lack of a demand] is a standard argument we hear from incumbents. They always use this and say they have piloted it somewhere and they don't see demand, but the FTTH Council did a study where we looked at 'real' fibre operators in Europe that have been going for more than four years and found that they had no issues with demand - in fact they have take-up rates of 40 to 60 per cent," FTTH Council Europe director Hartwig Tauber told Computing.
