Internet provider TalkTalk ( AOL ) has expanded upon its recent speech to the Royal Television Society (RTS), where the ISP accused BT of attempting to "recover the monopoly position that it lost many years ago" (here), by once again calling for "effective and vigorous competition" in the growing market for superfast broadband services.

TalkTalk also praised the process of Local Loop Unbundling ( LLU ), which has allowed rival ISPs more control over BT's traditional copper phone lines (i.e. existing broadband services). The ISP claims that LLU networks have now been rolled out to over 90% of the country and as a result "customers are paying on average over 50% less for their broadband than they did in 2005" while getting "four times faster" speeds. Sadly there's no comparable solution for superfast broadband, yet.


BT is widely expected to release its final Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) pricing imminently, although most ISPs anticipate that the operators final offer will fall short of their desires and thus force the communications regulator, Ofcom UK, to intervene.

Ofcom has been preparing for such an outcome since earlier this year (here), although any review would result in months of additional delay. Meanwhile the government's Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office and county councils will continue to hand out funding for new projects, despite the obvious lack of competing solutions.

Separately the CTO of business ISP Timico UK, Trefor Davies, has suggested that PIA alone will not be enough and the government needs to go much further. "The only sensible approach is for there to be a nationally owned infrastructure company that puts down the physical layer and sells to wholesalers in the same way that [BT]Openreach sells to BT Wholesale and other large network operators today," said Trefor.

The idea of a nationalised infrastructure operator, or perhaps a renationalisation of BTOpenreach itself, is nothing new but Ofcom's previous Strategic Review of Telecommunications (TSR) ruled it out in favour of new regulation and LLU. The implementation of such an operator would also be slow, costly, complicated and would probably come far too late to resolve today's problems.