Regulator tells BT to open up cable network

[denphone]

Regulator tells BT to open up cable network to competitors.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35657210

Lets hope Ofcom keep them to it.

In what sense have Ofcom told BT to "open" its cable network? Competitors are already supplying services via Openreach cables. That BBC article was rather vague.

Where's a network specialist when you need him ...

[pip08456]

Openreach has had ducting and pole sharing available for a few years now.

No change on that front.

[Horizon]

..... well, that's the first I've heard of that.

In my area, the only people who have access to the poles and ducts are BT/OPenreach.

This is a significant move because it will force OPenreach to allow access to their poles and ducts and ensure that competitors have all the information on the location and type of poles and ducts.

I think give them 5-10 years and Sky will become the largest "cable" operator in the country once they've access to Bt's infrastructure. I reckon they'll roll out FTTP as fast as they can.

Roll on competition.

[Pierre]

No, for at least two years you have been able to use BT poles and ducts. They charge you so much though it's cheaper to put your own in.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Horizon

I think give them 5-10 years and Sky will become the largest "cable" operator in the country once they've access to Bt's infrastructure. I reckon they'll roll out FTTP as fast as they can.

I have my doubts.

Sky are throwing a paddy that BT haven't been split up and if they want to supply FTTP they'll have to spend their own money. They wanted Openreach split and someone else to pick up the bills. Hyperoptic are pleased and are getting on with the job as they have since 2012, Sky are whinging to Ofcom and anyone else who will listen as indeed they have for years.

Based on the costs budgeted for their trial in York Sky spend enough on Premier League rights, just the rights, nothing else, to deliver FTTP to every premises in Leeds, the country's 3rd most populous city, every 6 weeks.

Their York trial has cost about as much as they hand the Premier League in 5 days.

PIA has been available since 2013.

https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/hom...polesharing.do

https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/hom...IRO17thMay.pdf

16 May 2013 – Issue 2

Sky were late to FTTC as they wanted to sweat the equipment they've placed in BT's exchanges further, they still don't offer 80Mb FTTC online you have to call, they have no FTTP product over Openreach.

They have had ample opportunity to get on with the job of building FTTP if they chose to. Beyond what's increasingly looking like a PR stunt in York they've shown no indication of wanting to. It looks a lot more like they'll do what they have so far both for their satellite TV and their broadband - rent infrastructure from someone else.

[muppetman11]

Thinking out loud

Could we not see Sky purchase Hyperoptic ?

Would there be any benefits ? And would there be any benefits ?

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by muppetman11

Thinking out loud

Could we not see Sky purchase Hyperoptic ?

Would there be any benefits ? And would there be any benefits ?

Doubtful, minimal and minimal.

Hyperoptic lease their network outside of the apartments from BT and others. They lease their network hardware the customers connect to that's in the basements of the apartments. They have no real overlap with Sky's existing operations.

Sky purchased the O2/Be customer base with the intention of taking their customers on O2/Be hardware in exchanges and moving them over to their own ADSL hardware in the exchanges. This allowed Sky better economies of scale within the exchanges and to make this change wasn't much more than a bunch of orders to BT to do lift and shifts to rejumper lines and increase capacity on their own kit.

Sky have no equivalent for the Hyperoptic product. The only saving initially would be in being able to connect the Hyperoptic buildings to their existing backhaul in BT exchanges and use their own national network. As the Hyperoptic circuits between buildings and exchanges ran to term they could perhaps also replace some of these with the network they bought from Easynet.

Not sure what'd be in it for Sky. Covering a hundred thousand MDU premises isn't really their thing.

EDIT: Inevitably now I've said that Sky will acquire Hyperoptic on Monday.

[Horizon]

Originally Posted by Pierre

No, for at least two years you have been able to use BT poles and ducts. They charge you so much though it's cheaper to put your own in.

I was completely unaware that BT's poles and ducts were open to other operators, so it begs the question, what new thing is Ofcom proposing then? Price caps on Openreach when they make their infrastructure available to others?? I can't work out what Ofcom want changed that is different to now.

---------- Post added at 00:23 ---------- Previous post was at 00:09 ----------

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

I have my doubts.

Sky are throwing a paddy that BT haven't been split up and if they want to supply FTTP they'll have to spend their own money. They wanted Openreach split and someone else to pick up the bills. Hyperoptic are pleased and are getting on with the job as they have since 2012, Sky are whinging to Ofcom and anyone else who will listen as indeed they have for years.

Based on the costs budgeted for their trial in York Sky spend enough on Premier League rights, just the rights, nothing else, to deliver FTTP to every premises in Leeds, the country's 3rd most populous city, every 6 weeks.

Their York trial has cost about as much as they hand the Premier League in 5 days.

PIA has been available since 2013.

https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/hom...polesharing.do

https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/hom...IRO17thMay.pdf

16 May 2013 – Issue 2

Sky were late to FTTC as they wanted to sweat the equipment they've placed in BT's exchanges further, they still don't offer 80Mb FTTC online you have to call, they have no FTTP product over Openreach.

They have had ample opportunity to get on with the job of building FTTP if they chose to. Beyond what's increasingly looking like a PR stunt in York they've shown no indication of wanting to. It looks a lot more like they'll do what they have so far both for their satellite TV and their broadband - rent infrastructure from someone else.

Has there actually been a Sky customer yet on the York FTTP network? I know there are TalkTalk customers now using the FTTP service.

If the FTTP trial is as cheap as you say, I wonder why Sky aren't going at it full throttle? Why bother getting involved at all if they don't intend to use it? They must have spent quite a wodge of money on it. Quite bizarre. Unless they're waiting for a better deal on Openreach's infrastructure and are just waiting to ditch CityFibre at the first opportunity.

On your wider point about whether they are really interested in FTTP at all considering they have 10 million+ satellite customers, I think they are based on their past broadband activities.

They have a massive satellite tv base, but most pundits predict that the future of tv will be IP delivered and I believe we will see more activity from Sky in this area in the future. Now TV is already in place and I think this service will expand more as their attention gradually shifts onto IPTV.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Horizon

Has there actually been a Sky customer yet on the York FTTP network? I know there are TalkTalk customers now using the FTTP service.

Yes, though considerably after TalkTalk.

Originally Posted by Horizon

If the FTTP trial is as cheap as you say, I wonder why Sky aren't going at it full throttle? Why bother getting involved at all if they don't intend to use it? They must have spent quite a wodge of money on it. Quite bizarre. Unless they're waiting for a better deal on Openreach's infrastructure and are just waiting to ditch CityFibre at the first opportunity.

The point wasn't regarding how cheap or not the FTTP trial is, but to illustrate just how much money Sky are prepared to throw at content and how little they are prepared to invest in infrastructure. They lose the Premier League they will feel the impact immediately, they invest in FTTP it'll take years if not decades to recover the investment.

Sky are run on a short-termist basis, even more so than many.

Originally Posted by Horizon

On your wider point about whether they are really interested in FTTP at all considering they have 10 million+ satellite customers, I think they are based on their past broadband activities.

Based on what past broadband activities? They bought a national network operator, expanded the unbundled network that operator had already built and that's about all.

They internally tested sub-loop unbundling and VDSL but it came to nothing. They have run a few trials of FTTP both in co-operation with Cityfibre and independently, involving aerial fibre and underground.

Originally Posted by Horizon

They have a massive satellite tv base, but most pundits predict that the future of tv will be IP delivered and I believe we will see more activity from Sky in this area in the future. Now TV is already in place and I think this service will expand more as their attention gradually shifts onto IPTV.

You don't need to build your own local loop to run OTT services - Netflix don't own a local loop and account for over 1/3rd of all US broadband usage. Sky can happily continue to shift the risk of network investment onto Openreach just as they have kept the risk of operating a satellite platform on SES Astra - BSB's Marconi satellite was allowed to disappear into the ether.

They would be doing their shareholders a disservice if they weren't constantly doing the FTTPR activities. Their aim is for Openreach to provide a point to point fibre network they can unbundle and take full control of just as they have full control over MPF copper. Their reluctance to get involved with FTTC was, to a large extent, because it's a bitstream product.

Were Sky to start seriously building a network they would have to obviously invest in construction of that network but would then also have to maintain that network and run truck rolls to customer properties when it goes wrong. The extent to which they could outsource this as they outsource the installations and repair activities for their current DTH products is debatable.

We'll see if they take the plunge with the new PIA products, however I would be inclined to look to other new entrants and, possibly if they can't hook up with Liberty Global, Vodafone.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

I have my doubts.

Sky are throwing a paddy that BT haven't been split up and if they want to supply FTTP they'll have to spend their own money. They wanted Openreach split and someone else to pick up the bills. Hyperoptic are pleased and are getting on with the job as they have since 2012, Sky are whinging to Ofcom and anyone else who will listen as indeed they have for years.

Based on the costs budgeted for their trial in York Sky spend enough on Premier League rights, just the rights, nothing else, to deliver FTTP to every premises in Leeds, the country's 3rd most populous city, every 6 weeks.

Their York trial has cost about as much as they hand the Premier League in 5 days.

PIA has been available since 2013.

https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/hom...polesharing.do

https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/hom...IRO17thMay.pdf

16 May 2013 – Issue 2

Sky were late to FTTC as they wanted to sweat the equipment they've placed in BT's exchanges further, they still don't offer 80Mb FTTC online you have to call, they have no FTTP product over Openreach.

They have had ample opportunity to get on with the job of building FTTP if they chose to. Beyond what's increasingly looking like a PR stunt in York they've shown no indication of wanting to. It looks a lot more like they'll do what they have so far both for their satellite TV and their broadband - rent infrastructure from someone else.

Sky are just doing what they always do. Spending as little as possible on their own infrastructure and bitching like crazy when others refuse to open theirs. Back in the 90s, they could have set up their own cable operator. They waited for others to do so, and went for satellite broadcasting (using, from what I am told, infrastructure provided by others).

Then, when they launched Broadband, they initially (and still do to some extent) used BT's infrastructure. They did buy EasyNet, and spent money expanding that, as well as buying Be, but they sold EasyNet..

While spending relatively little on their own infrastructure (even the £210m Sky spend on EasyNet pales into insignificance compared to the billions of pounds of debt the cable companies built up developing their networks), they complain they should be given access to networks built by others..

The thing is, I'll lay odds that the only reason Sky hasn't locked up access to it's own service is that beyond requiring channels to use a certain kind of encryption, blocking access to that encryption, and blocking access to their EPG, they can't stop the channels approaching SES S.A. (the owner of the Astra satellites used by Sky) and getting access from them.

---------- Post added at 19:37 ---------- Previous post was at 19:29 ----------

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Sky are run on a short-termist basis, even more so than many.

That could be their downfall.. After all, a lot of their income comes from the rights they hold to various sporting events (in particular, the Premiere League). All it would need is for someone with larger pockets to offer more than Sky are willing/able to do. Of course, it wouldn't help if someone broke their encryption and ensured that the keys were made widely available..

In their defence, the way they operate, they don't have an awful lot of infrastructure to maintain/support (which I suspect is Virgin's largest cost).

[sollp]

Virgin have built a network using BT exchanges and Virgins to provide a network for Sky's Broadband. Ironically

http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/sky-gets...ia-fibre-deal/

[Pierre]

Yes, we lease them fibre for backhaul from exchanges were they don't have fibre reach. But that's not unusual we do it for several operators.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by sollp

Virgin have built a network using BT exchanges

They have built some network from BT exchanges for sure.

Some leased lines sold by Virgin, in common with everyone else pretty much, will use BT circuits between customer and exchange where they'll be picked up by Virgin.

This way Virgin Media Business can sell managed solutions to an enterprise even when that enterprises has branches outside of the cabled area. VMB even lease fibre from BT exchanges back to the VM network.

[sollp]

Originally Posted by Pierre

Yes, we lease them fibre for backhaul from exchanges were they don't have fibre reach. But that's not unusual we do it for several operators.

Yes, but i was really getting at we are providing a backhaul for the competition so they can have the capacity for there broadband