BT playing its broadband hand

Belated it may be but BT's promise of cheaper broadband is definitely welcome news.

Within hours of its commitment to halve the price of wholesale ADSL (as of 1 April) service providers were issuing press releases promising to pass at least some of that saving to the consumer.

Users will get broadband for anything from £120 to £200 cheaper a year. The difference between broadband and narrowband pricing will be minimal. And that means we can finally discover the answer to a crucial question: do users really want ADSL?

It may sound like a facile question but the industry has assumed for so long the answer will be yes could there just be a possibility we're in for a nasty surprise? Conventional wisdom has it that high prices and an intransigent BT are all that stands between the words 'Broadband' and 'Britain' being proudly used in the same sentence.

But the some 200 service providers who resell BT's ADSL network have much to do. Today there are just 145,000 ADSL users in the UK. BT says it should be one million in a year's time and that in two years time a quarter of all internet connections should be broadband.

On current numbers that's around three to four million lines. And let's not start with Tony Blair's wish to bask in the reflected glory of a teched-up nation.

It's going to take more than good marketing to convince users to make the switch. The technology industry has all too frequently over-promised and under-delivered.

It did it with standard net access, leaving users faced with frozen screens and ticking meters. Providers will have to demonstrate the theoretical speeds of ADSL mean something in reality. It's doable but it's not a foregone conclusion.

The irony is that if too many people sign up for the ADSL experience the network could come to a grinding halt.

This isn't the ending - happy or otherwise - to the broadband story.