Quote:
Originally Posted by Horizon
They're very serious about more expansion..... which gets me thinking if they want a network that covers more or less most of the country, will they then open up that network to other operators and make dosh from renting their cables and/or ducts out now?
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No. The coverage doesn't change the case, or lack of, for such an action. It would probably not be tolerated for them to wholesale access to their network on discriminatory terms in this climate either. I'd say there's a strong chance once they start allowing it that they lose any chance of claiming no Significant Market Power.
As an example of the opposite Deutsche Telekom obtained regulatory concessions when they deployed VDSL so that only they could sell it for a while, no wholesale.
VM get about 40% of the business in their passed areas. Offering a wholesale product, even where the wholesale charge is 50% of their total price and they retain 40% of the retail sales, both very optimistic, they would need 54% of the broadband market to receive the same revenue, and would have similar running costs per customer due to the equipment, OSS, ordering systems, capacity, hardware, etc, that'd be needed.
Allow people to buy the broadband elsewhere you face the prospect of Sky, BT Vision, TalkTalk TV, etc, being used instead of the VM product.
Add a ton of restrictions to the wholesaling the obvious question becomes what's the point?
VM and their predecessors have always wanted to avoid wholesaling unless on extremely favourable terms for them.