What we areseeing with the ducting is the classic BT delaying tactic. OFCOM say that us under EU rules they have SMP they have to open up their ducting to compettion. BT comes up with a price. The ISP's do the calculation and say that BT are charing three times as much to use it as it should be. Eventually when agreement cannot be reached OFCOM will launch another ivestigation and set a fair price.
At the moment no one know what the internal costs that BT uses they may not even know themselves as they may not extract that as a seperate costs

If Openreach is a seperate company even if it is owned by BT that cost becomes transaparent as every onne will be charged that cost even BT so it is a level playing field at the moment it is not.

The competiters have costed how much it costs BT for the ducting and on their costs model it is about a third of what BT want to charge.

BT will now gain about an 18 month commercial adevantage untill OFCOM resolve the issue

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

If BT Openreach were a separate company BT itself would become a customer of BT so would have to charge BT the same rate for using the ducts as third parties.
At presnt BT are not directly charged for using the ducts it is just lost in the general costs and there is no way of telling how much BT are being charged at present for using the ducts

That's because the same bit of the business that owns the ducts, Openreach, owns their contents. BT Wholesale, like everyone else, rents the use of the copper within the ducts.

If you're going to bemoan the current regulations at least have some clue what they actually are.

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

If Openreach is a seperate subsiderry company the BT Holding Company has no direct control on the subsiderry company and cannot influence it's business strategy

All ISP's & Telco's would be on the same footing including BT would be on the same footing ie they would be customers of BT Openreach. Clearly the larger the company the better the deal they may be able to make with BT openreach

The influences would remain exactly as they are now. BT Openreach have a mission to produce products which satisfy as many of their customers as possible. Their biggest customer is, by some way, BT Wholesale.

Short of having them operate differently from everyone else by having some kind of active prejudice against their largest customer there is no reason, at all, to think that a full separation of BT would change this, which is in no small part one of the many reasons why it hasn't been posited seriously.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Are you aware that Openreach does not supply to the end user already, and simply deal with the communications providers?

With BT and Virgin being the two biggest companies this 'new' company would still simply serve their needs, i.e. biggest provider of revenue would have biggest say.

Openreach is already in the situation where the more loop it has out there the more it gets paid, alas the costs of upgrading to fibre or in VM's case rolling out more Docsis is not cheap. The money to do this comes from shareholders, how much can they invest?

sorry if I come across as rude but did you read his post? the fundamental issue been that ultimately openreach and BTr are the same company owned by the same shareholders.

The problem I see with a wholesale variant of VM is that the congestion chokepoint's are where the local loop terminates at the UBR, so wholsale customers would likely be vulnerable to that and not be too happy about it.

BT shouldn't HAVE to open up at all its their infrastructure. All I see is other moaning ISP's (mainly Virgin which has no room to talk) about pricing. If they don't like it... don't use it

Its already cheaper than others in Europe

You wouldn't need to use VM's cable network, just its ducting. Why would you use a inferior DOCSIS network when you could put in your our FTTH

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

First of all OFCOM have to prove something. The usual BT approach is to be obstructive. We have this with the opening up of the BT ducting they set an unrealistically high price for third parties to use it.

They are not breaching any OFCOM rules with this ducting "issue" though. As they are being forced to open up they are trying to ensure they get the correct amount of money for doing so.

Imagine buying your council house from the government all those years ago, only to be now told by the government you have to rent it out as well as use it yourself, and not only that if the government don't like the price you sent and if other possible tenants complain about the price they'll tell you to lower it?

Its their own property they bought it outright. VM wouldn't be happy about opening up either, but if there's going to be any opening up VM should too, its not about SMP this is about coverage, BT have the most coverage but VM also cover 50% of the country so they certainly should open up and also set their own pricing accordingly.

THey are though over pricing it by about three times. The ISP's have done the somes and the costs should be about 1/3rd of what BT are wanting to charge. So although OFCOM have said that thy have to give access to their ducts BT have priced it so high that no one can use it as they would not be able to compete

This if agreement on prices cannot be reached and they are poles apart at present will end up going back to OFCOM with yet more delays before BT realy open up there ducts to competition.

The exact costs can be open to discussion but the ISP's are correct in saying they are in the region three times higher then they should be.

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

The exact costs can be open to discussion but the ISP's are correct in saying they are in the region three times higher then they should be.

I'm no BT lover, but whence this touching faith in the ISPs?

It's as much in their interests to show the costs as low as possible as it is in BT's to show them higher.

Exactly... they've done their sums.... based on what? Only Virgin could come up with something reasonably close, but they still won't have the full story. What experience do Sky & TT have, they have no ducting or poles to base anything on

And its not to be done at cost Bob you do realise that, its at profit they have to make something out of it

I just find it amazing that these other ISP's with nothing to loose are even trying to barter with the price that is already lower that Europe, if Ofcom are ok with the prices but other ISP's deem them too expensive they don't have to use them. Simple

Edited by deleted (Sun 10-Apr-11 12:51:28)