Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

The BT network was paid for by the taxpayer and purchased from the taxpayer when BT was privatised. The shares in the company were purchased from the government, not handed out for free.

You may consider it a difference, the law doesn't. Due to BT being considered to have significant market power and a former state monopoly it is regulated and inherited a universal service obligation. These and the other conditions of BT's regulation are in a series of laws. It was a concern for ntl when considering ways to expand the network that if they grew too large they may be considered to have SMP and find themselves regulated in the same way.

You may consider it unfair and not see it happening but barring legal changes it can and will happen. VM will of course be paid for access to their infrastructure, it won't be free.

EDIT: Curious though - why do you care about fairness as far as your cable supplier go? If as a result of these changes investment is driven which delivers better services to everyone will you be complaining about how unfair it is on LGI that they had to open up their infrastructure while contemplating whether to take a 1Gb down and up FTTP service or VM's new 1.5Gb down, 250Mb up DOCSIS 3.1 service?

I get investors and staff feeling hard done by but normal customers? Really?