At present there is no roll-out of FTTC from another operator that overlays the Openreach, but would be ironic if increased competition at that level leads to slower speeds possible in the network in the future.

Once the FTTC kit is ten years old it should be close to end of life, and if take-up is good, then investment by the commercial operators to push the fibre further seems a reasonable course of action.

The issue of copper telephone lines is another, if Openreach could recover the copper, it would not pay for fibre, but at least help the case, and the empty ducting would make easier to get the fibre tubes through.