Rival UK ISPs Raise Alarm Over Full Fibre Competition and Openreach

A number of broadband ISPs including TalkTalk, Hyperoptic, Cityfibre and Gigaclear, as well as the Independent Networks Co-operative Association (INCA), have written to the UK Government and Ofcom in the hope of encouraging tougher measures to prevent Openreach (BT) from hampering “full fibre” (FTTP) competition.

The government has already made clear that they want 15 million premises to have access to Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband by 2025 and then nationwide to all by 2033 (here), although the latter date would require a huge public investment (i.e. not commercially viable in rural areas without it) and is currently just a largely unfunded aspiration.

For its part Openreach have already committed to roll-out FTTP to 3 million premises by the end of 2020 (March 2021 financial) and they’re in the process of negotiating to ensure a favourable regulatory environment, which could enable them to extend this deployment to 10 million premises by around 2025. At present nearly all of this work reflects a purely commercial investment.

However Openreach are not the only game in town. Over the past couple of years a growing number of alternative network (AltNet) ISPs have committed to do major roll-outs (see our ‘Summary of Full Fibre Broadband Plans‘). For example, Cityfibre have committed £2.5bn to deliver 5 million FTTH premises alongside Vodafone (here), while Hyperoptic plan 2 million by 2021 or possibly 5 million by 2024 (here) and Virgin Media are hoping to add 2 million.

Nearly all of this battle is taking place in commercially competitive urban areas, but some ISPs still fear that Openreach could use their weight in an anti-competitive way. For example, Cityfibre was less than pleased when, after announcing their intention to cover the city of Coventry, Openreach came out and did the same (here and here).

Balancing the threat from such overbuild is difficult precisely because, at this stage, we’re mostly talking about urban markets that have always been aggressively commercially competitive areas. Openreach and Virgin Media have both overbuilt each other and will continue to do so. Naturally the more players that venture into this market, the tougher it becomes to gain a return on such significant investments.

Calls for Monitoring Openreach

Over the past couple of years we’ve already seen Openreach become a “legally separate” company from BT, with its own largely independent board. Nevertheless rival ISPs remain concerned that BT could try to frustrate competition in the new “full fibre” market and they’ve once again called on the Government to take a tougher line.

In particular The Sunday Times (paywall) reports that the ISPs want to see a new “early warning system” introduced to ensure a level playing field. This would be intended to tackle anti-competitive behaviour, although as usual the devil will be in the detail. Sadly the article doesn’t explain what key performance indicators such a system would use or how it might respond when triggered.

The letter alleges that Openreach still has the motive to “completely undermine” competition and that they seek to both protect their legacy products and establish themselves as the “monopoly full-fibre provider.” This seems unlikely to happen, albeit only while the market remains as competitive as it is today.

The Response

In response the Government’s culture secretary, Jeremy Wright MP, merely said that they’re continuing to monitor how negotiations are going. Meanwhile Ofcom added that they “remain vigilant” of situations where Openreach could use a “first-mover advantage” and “specific predatory actions” to undermine rival altnets.

Finally, Openreach noted how they are already a highly regulated business and will work closely with Ofcom and the Government in order to fulfil their commitments regarding transparency. We should add that the Government have so far shown little interest in preventing commercial overbuild by rivals, particularly in urban areas where aggressive competition is a fact of life (i.e. they opted not to act in the Future Telecoms Review).

Nevertheless we shouldn’t forget that Openreach’s current FTTP products tend to be significantly more expensive and slower than the ones now being built by rivals (i.e. when compared at the same price points). Indeed there is no guarantee that Openreach will remain the main provider for such services into the future either.

At present nobody has a true dominance in FTTP and it would be a mistake to assume that Openreach are the only ones to seek such a position going forward. The UK market is going through a rapid pace of change.