What's the future of the "other" FTTP providers?

So the town next to mine is getting FTTP installed by Swish. My town is apparently getting FTTP installed by Hi!Broadband.

It would seem that if you want FTTP any time soon in these two towns, you'll have to go with one of these two.

Is this likely to be the future of FTTP? i.e. Your only option will be whichever company ran the fibre in your town?

Likely someone will over build at some point whether that is in next 2 years or 8 years is the uncertain part.

In reply to a post by AndyPandy:

Is this likely to be the future of FTTP? i.e. Your only option will be whichever company ran the fibre in your town?

Openreach has *by far* the largest footprint of FTTP, and that's an open-access network.

Some other networks also provide wholesale access (e.g. Gigaclear) or plan to once initial exclusivity deals have expired (e.g. Cityfibre).

Some others have mooted opening up wholesale access. The trouble is, for the tiny networks, it's not worth major ISPs doing the work to integrate into their systems. There is talk of a common wholesale access platform, but right now it's just talk. No doubt some of the small providers are just hoping they'll be swallowed up by a larger company.

In short: if FTTP is being delivered by a niche provider, you're probably stuck with taking ISP service from them too. But this isn't "the future of FTTP" because these niche providers really have insignificant coverage in the big picture.

Edited by candlerb (Wed 23-Sep-20 18:11:30)