Analyst firm Point Topic has warned that it will be difficult for the government to strike the right balance of investment in Next Generation Broadband Access (NGA). In particular they highlight the dangers of having a patchwork with many individual players and have supported calls for a more standardised approach.


Point Topic suggests that the "glue to pull these potential products together" and to ease their implementation is standardisation. A co-ordinated approach is paramount for the financial viability of NGA networks, they claim. Indeed this was a key recommendation of the earlier Caio Review.

However it should be pointed out that the need for such standards, especially between different methods of deploying and accessing fibre optic broadband networks, is not one lost on individual players.

The i3 Group in particular, which is rolling out a 100Mbps dark fibre network to cover Bournemouth, Dundee and many other places, has already proposed an open access platform. It's one that could theoretically be adapted to interconnect with other infrastructure and services too.