UK network 'ready' for swine flu

The number of swine flu cases in London has increased dramatically

BT is confident it can cope with the extra demands the swine flu pandemic may put on the UK's broadband network.

It follows a meeting in Whitehall of emergency services which raised doubts about whether the network could cope.

There were concerns it could freeze as more people suspected of having the virus are encouraged to work from home.

"BT's network is in a strong position to cope with the expected demands in home working," the firm said in a statement.

Andrew Ferguson, editor of broadband news website ThinkBroadband, thinks the big issue will be for companies, which will need to make sure their own computing systems are robust enough if lots of people are going to be remotely accessing machines in their offices.

"This uses both upstream and downstream capacity. What is likely to happen is that the evening peak spike may be repeated during the day and providers that have no spare capacity now will struggle.

"This could give the impression that the infrastructure is failing," he said.