AltNets Fear Openreach FTTP Price Cuts Put £20bn UK Investment at Risk UPDATE
The Independent Networks Co-operative Association (INCA), which represents UK alternative broadband ISP networks, has warned that Ofcom could be putting their collective investment of £20bn to build competitive full fibre networks at risk if they wave through Openreach’s (BT) next round of FTTP broadband prices cuts (Equinox 2).
As we’ve reported before (here), Openreach are widely expected to introduce another significant round of long-term price cuts to their wholesale Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) products for ISPs in the near future. The move will enable their ISPs to stay competitive with newer AltNets (Summary of UK Full Fibre Builds) and further reduce the price of related packages, which will in turn boost take-up by consumers and aid the move away from copper lines. Consumers will be rightly pleased to see this.
The approach is likely to follow a similar model to last year’s “Equinox” discount (here), which helped to bring the incumbents prices down to a level that was much closer to what AltNets typically sell to consumers at today. Previously, Openreach’s products had tended to be a fair bit more expensive than AltNets, but the aggressively competitive market meant that was never going to last.
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However, INCA fears that Ofcom will “wave through” a future Equinox 2 proposal in much the same way as they did Equinox 1, which they told ISPreview.co.uk could “severely dent investors’ confidence that the promises made by both Ofcom and the Government to foster a competitive market are being fulfilled.” Indeed, they argue that even Openreach’s act of “signalling of new offers” to ISPs is “already destabilising the market“.
Malcolm Corbett, CEO of INCA, told ISPreview.co.uk:
“The clear intention of Openreach’s pricing strategy is to restrict altnets’ willingness and appetite to keep building by denying them access to wholesale ISP customers. Given that BT/ Openreach is pulling back on its deployment plans, as recently reported by the FT and Telegraph, hobbling the altnet competition to stop them stealing a march makes sense – for them. But obviously this has important consequences for consumers and the Government’s gigabit strategy – overall the people who will suffer are those living in rural areas who will take longer to serve.
In terms of what they can do about it, the altnets will decide whether to formally challenge Ofcom after they have made a decision on whether to allow BT to go ahead or to block the proposals. This decision can only be made once BT formally notifies Ofcom of its intention to change the prices, which then gives Ofcom has 90 days to make a decision. Officials have indicated to us that they will use that time to formally consult. However, the grounds for a challenge are quite limited – challenges can only be made on issues of process by which a decision was reached, not the final decision itself.”
We should point out that Openreach aren’t strictly “pulling back” on their FTTP deployment (here). Instead, the operator has said that they’re making some short-term / cost focused adjustments to their build strategy. But they also claim this won’t change the overall pace of build (it continues to increase), and they still expect to cover 25 million premises by December 2026 as planned. Time will tell.
Otherwise, issues of commercial sensitivity tend to make it difficult to confirm what kind of impact all this is actually having on investment today. We still see plenty of funding flowing inward, but some big investors are known to be raising concerns with the regulator and government. However, some of this is perhaps to be expected, since those investing in AltNets will also want to protect that investment by any means they can.
Charles Cameron, Partner at Cameron Barney, told ISPreview.co.uk:
“Investors are concerned that goalposts are moving. Investment groups, particularly those with an international perspective, invested billions of pounds on the basis that the UK would provide the regulatory certainty that will help them make a return on their capital. I hope Ofcom and the UK government are mindful of this when considering BT schemes like Equinox and any successor proposals.”
Indeed, it’s easy to see why AltNets are concerned, given that in many cases Openreach’s expanded build programme will overbuild a lot of their deployments and the downward pressure on prices will make it harder for backers to gain a return on their investment (growing take-up becomes harder). But take-up via AltNets could also suffer if there’s a lower desire for ISPs to sell over rival wholesale networks in the first place, due to the attraction of Openreach’s offer and wider coverage.
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Many of these AltNets are still in the earliest stages of their investment and so carry a lot of risk. Suffice to say, they fear that Openreach’s discounts might eventually result in a reduction in competitive fibre infrastructure investment and thus deployment. If that were to happen then, a lot further down the road perhaps, it might potentially make such packages more expensive and reduce choice in the market.
Emphasis on the ‘might’ above, since we expect that there will still be competition in the future, even if it’s a lot less than today. Consolidation is already looming and will occur irrespective of Equinox – due partly to excessive overbuilding. Lest we forget that Openreach is not the only threat to AltNets, with VMO2 planning a new FTTP network of its own and the potential to wholesale out access to their existing infrastructure.
INCA’s Response
“Through its Equinox schemes, Openreach is attempting to actively re-establish the monopoly it enjoyed in the copper market, over the UK’s full fibre future,” claims Malcolm. INCA are now making several demands of Ofcom and the Government, which they hope will be enough to address their concerns – we’ve listed these below.
INCA’s Demands of Ofcom and Government
• Ofcom has a responsibility to act and must do so immediately.
• To prevent further signalling by Openreach, Ofcom should demand Openreach submit Equinox 2 for immediate assessment by Ofcom.
• Ofcom should immediately undertake public consultation with a focus on Equinox 2’s impact on the competitive market.
• Longer term, Ofcom should ensure that Openreach cannot engage in continuous signalling of new offers, designed to destabilise the market and prevent AltNet growth.
• Ofcom also must prohibit Openreach from proposing or implementing any schemes that link discounts to loyalty rebates. Such loyalty schemes abuse Openreach’s in-built advantage of an existing customer-base of almost totally dependent ISPs on the copper network, tying them in to the detriment of competition in full fibre provision.
• Government should make clear to Ofcom that this uncertainty cannot continue.
• In the absence of action by Ofcom, Government should publish an updated Statement of Strategic Priorities (SSP) directing Ofcom to ensure that the Government’s full fibre ambitions are realised.
However, it seems unrealistic to expect that Ofcom could stop Openreach, or any company for that matter, from merely “signalling” that they might introduce a new round of discounts in the near future – particularly if that is indeed going to be the outcome. If anything, this industry needs more transparency, not less.
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Even if they could prevent such “signalling“, there’s a myriad of unofficial channels where such information could still leak out, either via sources within Openreach or the ISPs they negotiate with. Lest we forget that ISPs are often the ones pressuring Openreach to reduce their prices (i.e. so they can remain competitive with AltNets) and not the other way around.
Outside of that, Ofcom have made clear that they’ll wait and see what Openreach publish for their Equinox 2 offer, which is expected very soon. After that, the regulator will have 90 days to consult on the changes and to examine whether any competition issues may arise.
Mark Shurmer, MD for Regulatory Affairs at Openreach, said:
“We take our legal and regulatory obligations extremely seriously and there’s a clear process for us to notify new pricing to Ofcom 90 days before it launches. This approach is transparent and it gives others an opportunity to raise issues directly with Ofcom. That’s what happened with our Equinox 1 offer, where concerns were found to be groundless by the regulator and the Competition Appeals Tribunal.
We’re constantly in discussions with Communications Providers – often at their request – about our pricing and ways to accelerate the adoption of full fibre broadband, and we’ll continue to work closely with them to support their customers. Our prices will also continue to enable fair competition alongside our unprecedented investment, which we believe is a great outcome for consumers and businesses across the UK.”
An Ofcom spokesperson said:
“All companies should be allowed to innovate and offer competitive prices, including Openreach. However, due to its market power, under our wholesale fixed telecoms market review rules Openreach must notify us of certain offers 90 days before they come into effect. This allows us, and the wider industry, to assess the offer and we have the power to block it if we decide it is anti-competitive.
Openreach has so far notified us of one long-term pricing arrangement for its FTTP services – last year – known as the ‘Equinox’ offer. We carefully considered this offer and the views of the wider industry, and concluded that it was not anti-competitive. Our decision was upheld by the Competition Appeal Tribunal earlier this year.
We have not received a notification from Openreach in relation to ‘Equinox 2’. Should we receive a notification of a new offer, we would consider whether it raises competition concerns requiring intervention. We would expect to consult with the industry on our provisional view before reaching a final decision.”
Many of the concerns being raised by AltNets today are similar to those that were levelled against Equinox 1 before, which didn’t hold much water. Cityfibre even went so far as to challenge Ofcom’s related consultation process, but the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) dismissed that (here). However, the tribunal did appear to hint that, were another consultation to occur (e.g. Equinox 2), then the regulator may need to take a wider view of the impacts (here). But whether that produces a meaningfully different outcome remains open to debate.
At the end of the day, nobody ever said that competition had to be friendly. Sometimes it can be brutal, particularly in urban areas where competition is often at its most natural and aggressive. Some AltNets have thus historically taken a big risk in assuming that Ofcom wouldn’t allow Openreach to adapt their pricing strategies to match.
As the market becomes more competitive, then Ofcom’s regulation actually tends to soften, not harden, and indeed their analytical framework remains more “concerned with the promotion of competition rather than the protection of competition as under competition law” (Ofcom quote). Suffice to say, we wouldn’t bet against Equinox 2 being blocked and prices falling further.
On the flip side, both Ofcom and the Government do sometimes seem as if they might be struggling to fully adapt to the dynamics of today’s more complex market, which has resulted in some AltNets feeling as if the regulator is unable to support that which they have so diligently helped to foster into existence.
As a side note, we believe the £20bn figure given by INCA is probably roughly reflective of their June 2022 report (here), which estimated that AltNets have an intended capital expenditure (CAPEX) – from now until 2025 – of over £17.7 billion, with operational expenditure of at least £1.5 billion.
UPDATE 1:54pm
We’ve been informed that, in relation to all this, Ofcom this week published an open letter to the industry (PDF) that sets out a summary of their recent work “in respect of concerns that have been raised with us regarding Openreach’s fibre build.”
As part of that, the regulator said they “have seen no evidence to suggest Openreach has rolled out its fibre network to target or harm competitors, or that these build decisions were not commercially rational. The evidence we have seen shows that various factors have to date fed into Openreach’s build decisions.”
Broadly speaking, the regulator seems reasonably happy with the current state of today’s market. But there is some talk about improving the information Openreach releases on its future build plans, although no useful specifics are provided to help explain what will be changing.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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So they’re worried they won’t be able to monopolise, it was only after openreach decided to upgrade my street that others are now trying to offer similar thing, where were they the past 5 years before openreach came and did all the legwork?
I see virgin trying to upgrade as well… if openreach didn’t bother, none of these thieving commercial, profiteering, heartless lot would bother about investing a penny.
It’s usually the other way round though that the altnets come first to take advantage of the fact Openreach haven’t yet. Thanks to Cityfibre I’m on a fantastic 500/500 connection whereas with Openreach I was stuck with a pathetic 14/10 FTTC connection. Despite being near the city centre there’s no sigh of Openreach FTTP any time soon and even when they do finally get here, the symmetric connection I have now has a far better upload.
The other way around here, Out of Reach had little interest until Zzoomm started building their network and now Out of reach have gone crazy and have pushed out their fibre faster. I now have a choice of Zzoomm and out of reach fibre.
John = BT Fan Boy
All hail the ALTNETS!!!
BT only do cuts to try and kill competition. It is NEVER for the customer benefit. It’s not that kind of company. My thoughts under free speech.
ALTNET coming here and I can’t wait as they’re doing the work now. BT can stick their rubbish FTTC at 40mbps, I’d rather symmetric FTTP anyway and its cheaper than BT snail speed packages anyway.
same where I am. I’m still on VDSL because I’m in a flat, but OR came and did FTTP first, followed by some unknown altnet outfit a few months later – of course using openreach ducts instead of doing the hard work themselves. “competition” indeed.
The altnets appear to be unhappy that BT are finally allowed to compete instead of permanently being knobbled to ensure fake “competition” succeeds.
I would still be on ADSL if it wasn’t for Hyperoptic. After 8 years Openreach still doesn’t have a plan to upgrade my building. I live in the middle of Camden, I honestly don’t know what they are doing.
Oh dear, are the AltNets worried about the competition they have entered into?
Now they want a government body to tell the big boy not to lower their prices.
Can’t see that working for the local village flour mill that sell their organic breakfast cereal in a couple of health food shops. Or even the mill supplying Harvest Morn to Aldi ”Please stop Mr Kellogg reducing their price to Asda, Tesco, Morrisons etc. as we will struggle to compete”
They’re worried about the market they entered into changing hugely and the incumbent being able to use their advantages to price and market them out. Justifiably.
Once Openreach have to consume their own PIA product in order to build on the same terms the altnets do then there’s something of a point.
The number of altnets is clearly not viable however allowing Openreach to go too cheap means we end up with none and are back to the Openreach / VMO2 duopoly. That is a big step backwards from the vibrant and competitive infrastructure and retail market we have now. Openreach and VMO2 both have history for doing the bare minimum to compete with each other.
As with most things it’s complicated not simply black and white.
nothing says “vibrant competition” like having multiple companies chasing the same “profitable” areas while everyone else, including many towns and cities, will be waiting for Openreach and only Openreach to get it done.
Much like how the couriers claim to be competition with Royal Mail but only for the easy pickings, everything else goes to the holder of the USO.
Virgin’s predecessors failed to do it and that was with a totally clear run with BT having been fully knobbled and each company having their own regional cable monopolies.
Eastern European countries sell 1Gbps broadband packages for 20 EURO/month or less and have enough money for infrastructure upgrade.
And the average salary in Eastern European countries is?
@Order Order!, a fair bit higher than it used to be, why do you think a lot decided to go back to their own country, even before Brexit
@Order Order!
In IT for instance same or better than in the UK. Some services are also paid pretty much the same now.
Average post tax incomes in Bulgaria are around £750 a month so the real cost is far greater as a proportion of their income
I always wondered how can they charge so little (it can be as low as €10 for a Gbit connection). Do they use EU subsidies to build their networks?
Openreach is pure greed! I agree with All European countries sell 1Gbps broadband packages for 20 EURO/month!
Why pay more? UK are the biggest farce rip off! We all foolish!
Pretty sure the economies are completely different. You’d at the very least need to adjust to the buying power that comes from 20 euro in France gets you vs 20 euro in Slovakia
When that 1 Gb/s slows down to 500, 250 or less Mb/s at peak times you’d be one of the first in the queue to complain.
That’s part of why prices are higher here.
Another is regulation. Openreach are allowed to price really low they end up squeezing everyone else out of the market then they can take advantage of the monopoly to raise prices.
I can’t speak for everyone but I don’t want to be back in a place where Openreach and VM have a duopoly.
Surely Ofcom should be pleased. If Openreach with their historic liabilities, a copper network to run in parallel, currently only offering asynchronous products, PSTN closure issues etc can offer lower prices it means their efficiency is increasing which as a regulated wholesaler means lower prices or for their ISPs to contain theirs.
Particularly in the bigger area where Alnets are not currently proposing to be or where VM FTTP competition only comes later.
Nothing to do with efficiency and copper irrelevant. More to do with the much higher take up rate than they anticipated.
Much as they grossly underestimated the demand for better services in the FTTC times they grossly underestimated the demand for full fibre.
Doesn’t change that however efficient an altnet is they cannot match Openreach’s deployment or operation costs.
Openreach can offer the bare minimum at the bare minimum price and kill off most competition with sheer volume. This isn’t desirable. The Openreach / VM duopoly kept prices higher and innovation lower. I personally don’t applaud that though your mileage may vary.
The article mentions Openreach’s decision to change strategy, in reference to their announcement around concentrating on Fibre connections, and finishing the partially completed network to a further 6 million premises; Due to the timing around this, it’s more likely due to the ending of the Super Deduction tax in 2023; BT were likely waiting until the budget to decide on their capex strategy going forward, with it now making more sense to spread out Capex, rather than concentrating on asset purchases during the super deduction period.
As far as investment into Altnet rollout, why should investment rely on OFCOM nobbling Openreach? The likes of Goldman Sachs (CityFibre) have deep pockets, they could probably afford to Fibre out the whole of the UK, sit on the investment, and profit over the longer term. The complaints against Openreach reducing prices, is more about securing a fast return for the investors in Fibre rollout, rather than doing the UK any favours. If they had their way, they’d see BT broken up and consigned to history.
BT is one of the few large publicly traded British Companies left, if it goes the same way as manufacturing companies, like Rover Group, it’ll be broken up with the parts sold off to various foreign entities and be consigned to history. For those thinking an end to BT would be a good thing, be careful what you wish for; Historically, foreign owned utility companies have been plagued with underinvestment while paying big dividends to their parent companies.
In my opinion, the Government/OFCOM shouldn’t help any foreign entities diminish any UK owned company, as once the UK companies are gone, they’re gone.
BT is rubbish now, has been for decades.
They did investment when they first took over the GPO, then sat on their A**** with ADSL (altnets used ADSL2+ long before BT!!!!) and then dictated an inferior FTTC technology.
They only do FTTP now because competition from Virgin Media and ALTNETS forced them too. Otherwise, they would be telling us still that we only need 80mbps FTTC and copper is wonderful. The 80 mbps is laughable due to bad quality of the copper and distance from exchange AND the fact BT never managed to do vectoring and only recently did impulse noise protection which had major issues on BT’s ECI kit causing 2 years of delay whereas the BDUK Huawei kit just worked.
The Huawei kit was chosen by BT and used alongside ECI in their commercial deployment before BDUK was a thing.
Openreach decided not to upgrade the ECI equipment to allow vectoring. DT in Germany did so.
The ECI wasn’t the greatest move but it clearly made sense at the time.
They also carried on with ECI right along till today when the Huawei kit worked best whilst the ECI kit has been plagued with problems and limitations. To date there is still no evidence that the Huawei kit for BB has backdoor spying etc. Unvetted software updates could of course introduce that.
Agreed.
The altnets are mostly shit anyway.
So Altnets are basically saying they want prices to be artificially high and therefore customers on Openreach only areas have to pay more. Not a great idea in a “cost of living” crisis.
No, they simply fear BT undercutting them whilst charging high prices for an ALTNET ISP that uses their shared ducts/infrastructure and other connectivity options.
Openreach should not be getting a penny of public money while they continue overbuilding. Its being done only to maintain a dominant position and stamp on the competition. Meanwhile the rest of the country is told FTTP will arrive sometime between now and the heat death of the universe.
That is just complete nonsense.
It is a free and open market and competition is good. Why is it overbuilding when OR do it but fine and acceptable when CF or Hyper do it?
You are just so far away from reality its crazy.
BT are only wanting to do this to stamp on ALTNETS and kill them off. As soon as that happens, a myriad of excuses why prices rise again. They really aren’t doing anyone a favour here, it’s about protecting their revenue long term and they fear more ALTNETS eating away because most of the ALTNETS have a superior service offering like symmetric and a number of them are cheap/reasonable to start with.
It never ceases to amaze me that people who hate BT for being too expensive compared to Altnets complain when BT try to reduce their prices.
It will amaze you “K” if you don’t read and digest what people say 🙂
Do that and you may have a moment….
What is worse than overbuilding is the fact that they are only deploying where their ducts are fine and can be used on anyone – they are actively avoiding locations where they don’t have usable ducts
Well yes, John, new ductwork is expensive. I’m not sure why this is a surprise. They certainly do deploy to areas where they need to do completely new duct builds however these tend to happen at the back end of deployments.
Openreach aren’t a charity. They have budgets to keep to. Building out to the easier properties initially gives them a better idea where they stand as far as spending that money goes. I could happily show you a bunch of streets in my old gaff, Leeds, where Openreach have built new ducts with new toby boxes. It’s just done later as it’s more expensive and takes longer: the uptake and income from the earlier build helps justify it.
Look where BT genuinely has a better service over competitors in most areas, like BT EE. EE is hideously expensive to by a SIM Only option as of today. Much lower data allowances than rivals, they didn’t undercut anyone here – they know they are the best mobile network and charge a fortune for it. Nothing in customer interest here for competitiveness.
In my opinion, they have an inferior FTTP offering (as of today as not symmetric) and they want to stifle/delete the ALTNETS so they can then raise prices again being the monopoly…
“In my opinion, they have an inferior FTTP offering (as of today as not symmetric) and they want to stifle/delete the ALTNETS so they can then raise prices again being the monopoly”
If symmetric offerings were required, then the Altnets would have nothing to fear from Openreach cutting wholesale pricing, since the Altnet offering would differentiate it from the Openreach offering, so what’s your problem? If the Altnets can’t survive, in the shadow of competition, then their business models were flawed from the outset.
Because its not a level playing field. BT inherited infrastructure from tax payer. They control access to ducts, poles and exchange level for a number of ALTNETS. BT to cut their price while keeping access charges high for the ALTNETS. That is stifling of competition…
Yet more sychophantic drivel from the resident BT shill.
Won’t somebody think of the little guys?!?
How are Goldman Sachs, Mubadala, Interogo Holdings and Antin Infrasatructure Partners able to compete with those greedy, anti-competitive BT pensioners!!
Indeed, lol.
Yeah lets LOL at the fact BT got their infrastructure for free from the tax payer whilst ALTNETS had to build it.
If it wasn’t for ALTNETS a number of us would be waiting decades for BT to finish any FTTP programme and we aren’t even all rural and difficult to do.
BT was privatised. Shares in BT were sold by the Government to investors. How does that constitute getting their infrastructure for free?
BT pensioners, Alex? You do know the two largest shareholders in BT are Patrick Drahi and Deutsche Telekom, right?
It’s fair to say that BT was privatised so the infrastructure wasn’t free however there are valid reasons to not treat BT the same as the altnets. A major one being that the altnets have to consume PIA, Openreach don’t. This is for valid reasons, it’d get ridiculous if Openreach had to install paper walls between itself and itself, however a level playing field has to be maintained and only regulation can do that.
Openreach started off with a massive advantage, altnets and their investors came into the market with various assurances in place and to take them away would be detrimental to us as consumers nationwide in the medium-long term and to all of us that have or will have access to altnets in the short term.
“Openreach started off with a massive advantage, altnets and their investors came into the market with various assurances in place and to take them away would be detrimental to us as consumers nationwide in the medium-long term and to all of us that have or will have access to altnets in the short term.”
The investors in Altnets are professional investors with deep pockets, most of them would sell their grannies house from underneath her, and throw her out on the street, so to say they received assurances painting them as some sort of victim, if things get difficult for Altnets, is inappropriate since sharks circling prey would be a more appropriate picture. Openreach should be allowed to charge what they want, as long as they can prove they’re making a profit and not selling below the cost of providing service. If the Altnets don’t like it, then they should alter their business model, instead of relying on OFCOM to shackle Openreach all the time.
Is it any wonder there are few British companies left with overseas operations? It’s probably because successive Governments nail them down at home, limiting their ability to invest overseas. The largest growing export, the UK has these days, is profits for foreign companies, both financial and others. Why do we need home based companies when we’ve got the likes of Amazon destroying the high street, and dominating the Cloud with a few other US tech giants, where’s the competition concerns there? And why are the Tech Giants allowed to squeeze businesses by monopolising their apps, think Apple, with hardly a competition flag being raised; In the meantime they don’t mind being subsidised by the Telecom companies, by relying on Net Neutrality to protect their cost of providing service. Rant over lol.
Rant indeed.
We pay the ISPs who pay the telcos for Internet access. Amazon, Apple, etc, pay for their Internet access. BT Wholesale sell bandwidth. Openreach sell bandwidth.
As you might recall BT tried going for world domination and ended up having to sell much of the family silver to cover the debt they incurred when the bubble burst.
I guess one obvious question: why are you more interested in what’s best for BT Group PLC than what’s best for us as consumers?
I couldn’t really care less as long as it’s the right product at the right price which is why I’m not interested in everyone having to use whatever Openreach see fit to provide.
Unless Openreach drop PON and go point to point dark fibre I don’t want to go back to a choice of Openreach or Openreach. I like the option of niche products. That I can use two different fibre networks is great for resiliency too.
I don’t understand why anyone other than BT staff and shareholders would favour giving Openreach free reign to squeeze out other operators.
BT, rightly, complain when the regulatory environment is changed to their detriment and I don’t see why altnets cannot do the same.
Had BT gone with much more ‘P’ and much less ‘C’ a decade and more ago this wouldn’t be an issue but we are where we are.
XGS, in answer to the points you raised. I’m an investor in BT and a couple of other UK companies, so I have a vested interest in BT and the UK economy doing well. I wont invest in Foreign companies.
As far as your points defending the Tech giants, they apply dictatorial control over sellers on their platforms; For example, Apple takes a fee of 15% from developers, or 30% from social media companies using its In-App Purchase feature, and since Apple manufacture the Iphones and Mac’s, they keep an iron grip over the ecosystem and cream excessive fee’s off others. Amazon squeezes businesses using its platform, by punishing them if they sell for even a penny less elsewhere, pushes them to use the Amazon warehouses and also compels them to to buy ads on the site to ensure people see their products.
It’s clear the Tech Giants don’t mind monopolising their platforms and squeezing businesses using them; So why do people defend the Tech Giants, when it’s suggested the Telecom companies do the same to tech companies hogging bandwidth?
In summary. I use Amazon myself, so I realise they offer a good service, but they cream massive profits off businesses using their platform, which has become a virtual monopoly; Apple have done the same with product offerings using their ecosystem. Telecom companies invest billions into infrastructure, why should different rules apply to them than companies like Amazon and Apple, who seem to write their own rules?
XGS, as far as the Altnets are concerned they should be able to stand on their own two feet, without relying on OFCOM watching their back. Most of the Altnets will go the same way as the Cable companies in the early 90’s, with many unattractive for takeover due to their location. Going off other articles, it looks as though OFCOM are loosening the regulatory chains holding BT/Openreach down, so true competition may soon start to happen.
This is not a case of wealthy investors vs retirees, it is a case of establishment trying to crush competition. Plenty of us poors work and hold a stake in smaller alts. BT openreach is the reason why this country’s internet was in the toilet compared to other countries and has a big need for alts, it is the target to bring down
Nobody defending Amazon. Amazon generally give a better customer service than a number of British Businesses, including BT. I’ve tried to buy from British business, only today met with a barrage of bad procedures from one major chain. Even sent an email to HQ explaining this is why people shop with Amazon.
The ALTNETs are getting stuff done, BT take forever and a day and always put in half baked solutions that require more money later to address (like non symmetric) because they try and save pennies at the beginning. The country gets held back as a result. BT need their asses whipping quite frankly – other countries raced ahead deploying fibre while they were not interested and still trying to flog a dead horse with copper.
Good ! im sick of all these different companies digging up my road. Got 4 companies all down the same road now its pointless
I suscept the bigger issues the Altnets are going to have is people been aware of them and then trusting them enough to order from them.
BT lowering prices is good for the consumer, which hopefully won’t effect the rollout of the Altnet’s.
People will pay more for better products e.g. symmetrical speeds, better peak download speeds, child protection features etc. I don’t see price been a major issue, just sell at better product
Also I can’t see how all these Altnet’s will survive, hopefully they will be able to consolidate so that we end up with 4-5 major ISP’s nationwide. Instead of BT/Openreach and Virgin.
You honestly deluded to think that BT are lowering prices out of their goodness of their heart for consumers?
It’s to try and undercut ALTNETS and put them out of business as most still have to pay non-lowered prices for ducts and pole access etc which BT got for free from the tax payer.
Right now, the ALTNETS are showing BT up and BT don’t like the competition. Lowering of prices is to kill them off so they can ramp up prices again and dictate when the country can have upgraded technologies at THEIR will. They deliberately haven’t lowered duct and pole infrastructure access prices…..
Anonymous – where did Darc say “out of the goodness of their heart”? Don’t shove words in peoples’ mouths. Openreach is lowering prices because it makes good business sense to get more folk on fibre and off copper, which less reliable and more £££ to run. It’s good for consumers cos they get a better service, lower prices and more choice. As the report says, they aren’t doing anything that goes against the rules and they can’t undercut altnets who still charge a lot less. As i understand it, Equinox is a ten year offer so that doesn’t really stack up with ‘ramping prices up again’.
So in this cost of living crisis, every company up and down the country should set their profits to ZERO while the war etc. still going on and energy prices are as they are, and that includes those godlike altnet, will they do it even if they just delay of profiteering/making a killing for 5 month?
Ofcourse not, they’re in a hurry to recoup all the money they invested and then start making profits once the initial investment is recovered… evil lot just looking at numbers on a computer screen going green and red, and effecting peoples lives, there’s no unity or country/community spirit, they can’t put off mad profiteering and allow people to get on their feet and the country’s finances become stable during spring next year.
How much tax do Alternets pay ? BT pays an enormous amount money to the UK exchequer and if BT were to shrink then the UK would be much the poorer. What we need is a strong BT with a fantastic network open to all to use at a reasonable price .Not companies who pay little UK tax where the profits all go overseas . BT Openreach is an open network where as some alternets have a monopoly on their network .So what the UK is doing is swapping what was a monopoly ,BT,but no longer , for other companies which don’t allow access. There will be limited competition on some alternets but not all. As a nation we should really be thinking about the bigger picture of how many teachers or nurses BT helps to fund through tax and how much these companies put back into the community . BT champions many charities and was a big sponsor of the 2012 Olympics . OFCOM is the the writer of the rule book and perhaps they should have mandated BT fibre the UK years ago. I just point this out as I feel that as a nation we should be looking at the bigger picture thats all .
What an incredibly dimwitted take. The amount of money the state steals away has no correlation with how poor or rich a country is.
Singapore is one of the lowest taxation countries and also simultaneously one of the wealthiest countries in the world. In contrast, North Korea takes pretty much everything and is one of the poorest
Also, the reason why BT openreach pays a lot of tax and never deployed fibre in the past is precisely because it makes a lot of profit because of the state sponsored monopoly it had for decades