Between the lines: BT's bold new network needs public-sector cash

LAST week, Ian Livingston, BT's shiny new Glaswegian chief executive, hit the ground running by announcing his company was to invest £1.5 billion in a state of the art fibre-optic broadband network throughout the UK.

There were predictable headlines suggesting British homes would soon have access to download speeds of 100 megabits per second (mbps), as compared with the current average of eight. Amid all the doom and gloom generated by the credit crunch, this loo...