Government May Open UK Utilities Infrastructure for Broadband

The UK government (DCMS) will today launch a call for evidence as part of a new review of the Access to Infrastructure (ATI) Regulations 2016, which could enable “gigabit-capable” broadband operators to expand their networks by harnessing existing electricity, gas, water and sewer networks via infrastructure sharing.

The idea is intended to support the Government’s planned public investment of £5bn (here), which aims to help spread “gigabit-capable” broadband networks to every home across the United Kingdom by the end of 2025 (funding for this will go toward the final 20% of premises in harder to reach locations, such as rural areas); this remains an incredibly difficult target to actually hit.

In theory gigabit providers could boost this deployment via more infrastructure sharing. Indeed it’s claimed in today’s announcement that more than 1 million kilometres of underground utility ducts could potentially play a role in the upgrade.

The call for evidence also highlights the possibility of opening up “access for broadband network operators to house their equipment on ‘passive’ infrastructure owned and used by other telecoms companies. Passive infrastructure includes utility ducts, poles, masts, pipes, inspection chambers, manholes, cabinets, and antenna installations.” That’ll be a “fun” industry engagement exercise (more on this later).

Finally, there’s a mention of making it easier for broadband operators to “run cables along new and existing infrastructure lining the road and rail networks,” which already happens a fair bit as part of limited commercial agreements. But such things can run into problems when significant disruption, safety or a risk of damage occurs (e.g. National Rail is sensitive to such work on river bridges and any potential delays to the train service).

In other words, telecoms companies are already free to make their own commercial agreements on infrastructure sharing, but meanwhile the ATI Regulations 2016 “have not been widely used.” The ATI includes provisions on the exchange of information about existing infrastructure, and the right to access that infrastructure on fair and reasonable commercial terms etc.

Matt Warman, UK Minister for Digital Infrastructure, said:

“It makes both economic and common sense for firms rolling out gigabit broadband to make use of the infrastructure that already exists across the country. This will help them avoid the high costs and disruption of having to dig or build their own and ultimately benefit consumers.

We’ve seen progress with improved access to Openreach’s ducts and poles, but other telecoms companies have large networks that are not easily accessible. We want them, and utility companies, to do more to open these up and help speed up getting next-generation broadband to people across the UK.”

Clare MacNamara, CEO of the Broadband Stakeholder Group, said:

“It is important for the Broadband Stakeholder Group that the right measures are in place to support UK fibre and gigabit rollout in order for industry to meet the target of nationwide availability by 2025. We therefore welcome Government’s review of the regulations.”

On the surface infrastructure sharing often seems like “economic and common sense“, but the reality can be complex. In order to understand this it’s often helpful to look at some of the challenges involved. For example, running fibre optic cable down water and sewer networks doesn’t always work due to limited space, access and the fact that a lot of these things are too old or unstable to risk such disruption. On the flip side it’s possible to use such fibre deployments to help monitor water supplies in real-time.

Similarly making use of existing electricity networks might seem like a no-brainer (or gas mains), but once again there are good reasons why such an approach is not widely used. One of the main issues is safety. Dealing with high powered electricity cables or gas requires a different set of skills, considerations and knowledge, as well as greater precautions (you can’t just ask ordinary fibre engineers to do it). Likewise coordinating electrical and telecoms work can be tricky, which can in turn add delays and thus costs.

The new call recognises some of the aforementioned caveats and notes that “large amounts of the sewer and gas network are unsuitable for building communications networks.” Ofcom has previously investigated the possibility of deploying full fibre networks across combinations of different non-telecoms infrastructure and found that the duplication of engineering efforts and maintenance costs could be unattractive.

Next we come to the issue of infrastructure sharing between telecoms operators. The fact that it took quite a few years for Openreach’s (BT) existing Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) product, which gives rival ISPs access to run their own fibre through the operator’s cable ducts, to reach the point it’s at today is one example of how difficult such change can be to implement. The same could be said of mobile operators (here).

Extending this sort of idea to the wider market is thus likely to run into problems due to the difficulty of balancing competitive interests between so many rivals in the same space (the ‘herding cats‘ analogy again). Furthermore there can be technical differences between networks and operators tend to consider detailed knowledge of their existing or future infrastructure to be commercially sensitive (confidential) information.

On top of all this there’s the issue of whether such sharing would actually produce the sort of national benefits desired. Certainly there are areas where it may help, but a lot of this will be for improving backhaul (capacity) connectivity rather than reaching individual homes. Backhaul fibre is already quite widely available, although room for improvement does exist.

Despite all of this the potential advantages, such as from reducing street words, costs and improving coverage at a more rapid pace cannot be ignored. The fact that some degree of infrastructure sharing, however difficult to achieve, does already exist (e.g. Openreach’s PIA and the recent agreement between mobile operators – here) also shows that such things are indeed possible and can work.

The catch here is that those two examples above only came about after significant pressure from Ofcom and the Government, which in both cases took years to realise. The same sort of pressure isn’t going to work with newer or smaller entrants in the fibre space (they’re already carrying a lot of risk and rewards in this field take time to materialise), although they are looking at improving access to Virgin Media’s network via the ATI Regs. But more incentives may be needed to encourage greater co-operation.

The Government’s review will now assess if there are any changes that could be made to the ATI regulations in order to further boost investment in infrastructure, and encourage the use of infrastructure sharing to increase the availability of gigabit-capable broadband. The Call for Evidence closes on 4th September 2020.

Call for Evidence – ATI Regulations 2016
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-the-access-to-infrastructure-regulations-call-for-evidence