Ofcom has today launched a new action plan (consultation) designed to encourage further investment and competition in the development of super-fast (up to 100Mbps) broadband services to UK homes and businesses. Its plan seeks to remove investment barriers without seriously impeding market competition and consumer choice, a nice idea in principal but difficult to get right.

The plan kicks off with an interesting bit of video interview spin from Ofcom's Head of Telecoms Technology, Chinyelu Onwurah; though it doesn't really say anything that hasn't been said before:


There's certainly a lot of new documentation, although as usual it's mostly all generalised talk at this stage and doesn't offer a great deal of truly new information:


Interestingly the one area of real movement appears to be in the regulators attitude towards new build homes, where the installation of fibre optic infrastructure could potentially hinder a consumer’s choice of broadband suppliers.

Ofcom has moved to clarify its regulatory stance on this point and push its "expectations" that operators will give consumers the necessary choices, yet stops short of imposing formal regulation for understandable fear of hindering investment.

It's a prime example of how difficult the balancing act between encouraging investment and fostering competition will be. Somebody has to front the money for these expensive new networks and they naturally require a return on that investment. We're unlikely to see a perfect balance for some years to come.

Ofcom's action plan related documentation:
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/nga_future_broadband/

Ofcom's New Build homes summary:
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/newbuild/statement/