Quote:
Originally Posted by muppetman11
Some of the arguments for opening the network can be found here and here |
Neither of those refer to the actual issue in the article, dark fibre access, they refer to a full structural separation of Openreach from the rest of the group?
---------- Post added at 09:59 ---------- Previous post was at 09:46 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kushan
So what does everyone here think? Good idea or bad idea?
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I am very much not in favour of TalkTalk and Sky receiving any kind of access to dark fibre unless it's done
very carefully.
They have been awful for the broadband market from my point of view, treating broadband as a freebie or as a retention tool and driving down quality in the case of TalkTalk while feeding the idea that good broadband should cost nothing by subsidising it senseless out of the TV business in the case of Sky.
They are also both slowing the replacement of BT's ageing copper network by clinging on for all they are worth to their own LLU infrastructure. They are far more addicted to copper than BT are, their entire business models depend on it.
Regarding the point made in the post above yours I am entirely in favour of separation of BT however not in the manner that TalkTalk and Sky want, in the hope they'll get at BT's infrastructure on the cheap. I would like to see BT granted the merger of their Wholesale and Openreach operations, as they requested, and for their acquisition of EE to complete unimpeded, however at the cost to them of separating off the rest.
Hence the 'BT Group', currently Global Services, Consumer, Business, Wholesale and Openreach, ends up being split into the merged Wholesale/Openreach entity, with Consumer, Business, Global Services and Mobile/EE entirely separate.
An extra sweetener to come in the form that if BT want to retire copper they may do so. LLU operators will be provided a 'virtual' unbundled solution and can take traffic from BT at the exchange, various national 'metro' handover points, or pay for a full Wholesale solution much as they do now with the current LLU, WBC, and WBMC products.
Sky and TalkTalk would of course jump up and down at this as their ADSL equipment becomes obsolete but times are changing.