candlerb
ULTIMATE Member
Just to reiterate that point: most people who are on FTTC 40/10 now, are likely to take 40/10 FTTP. If they don't need any more speed, why would they pay more? That accounts for a large proportion of users.That's it. Why would they use bang up to date stuff that costs more when it brings them no benefit? Often people are moving from FTTC to really low packages bringing them very little extra income each month given most of these folks were paying for copper.
This means that in many parts of the country, there originally wasn't any business case for upgrading to fibre. When Openreach is the only choice, they would simply be stealing their own copper customers. At wholesale, FTTP and FTTC are priced almost identically (the 40/10 products have pricing regulated by OFCOM, and are about £1 per month difference). So you end up with happier customers on a more reliable network, but almost no cash return on the investment. Some people will take faster speeds, but the pricing difference at wholesale is not very big anyway.
The business case only came about because of the altnets. When they start building in an area and taking a non-trivial subset of customers away from Openreach, Openreach has to build fibre to retain or regain them. It then becomes an existential issue for them, to avoid their legacy network going the way of the dinosaurs.
The altnets' business case also derives from the OFCOM-regulated pricing: they can cherry-pick the cheapest areas to build in, and undercut Openreach (since Openreach are not allowed to respond by reducing their own prices, or vary prices geographically)























