[Chrysalis]

I can tell you the problem sky have.

Sky want to rollout a proper VOD type service, the sattelite platform is inadequate for this, adsl 'can' be adequate if the line is good enough. The majority of lines are not so rules out a mass rollout over adsl.

Sky have been trialling FTTC believe it or not, but unsurprisingly have not done any kind of rollout.

Renting infrastructure of VM could suit sky but as far as VM are concerned its a 50/50 for them, they will make profits from selling services to sky but at the same time they helping their main competitor.

Now BT are initiating a very slow FTTC rollout starting this year, this rollout will be wholesaled and I believe isps will have 2 options from what I have been told elsewhere.

(a) rent bandwidth directly of BT wholesale in a datastream type variant, so BT would control the connection termination point and after that handover to the isp.
(b) sub loop unbundling so basically the isp have their own equipment in the cabinet, I assume they would then need to either rent fibre of openreach or get their own fibre to the street cabinet (expensive). sub loop unbundling is like what sky do now with LLU but I expect a lot more expensive in terms of deployment costs.

I do actually agree with sky, the problem with broadband in the country at the moment is although at retail we have tons of competion (too much of it), the wholesale level is all monopolised. We have VM who dont wholesale and BT who have no competition in over 50% of their coverage. This is leading to a very slow local loop investment from BT.