I guess party lines were all a conspiracy too.

What is interesting is to look at the number of staff that were employed by GPO one presumes to keep Strowger running

I guess party lines were all a conspiracy too.

Please don't remind me! We (my parents) had a party line from when first installed in 1952 or so until they moved in the mid 70s. We all hated it but there was nothing we could do about it. A bit like today's EO lines.

In reply to a post by edwincluck:

Perhaps ideally, the two operations - new BT Group and Openreach - should have divergent pools of shareholders; to prevent them from acting as one again.

In what way(s) have BT shareholders been "acting as one", either to the detriment of anyone, or possibly to the benefit of anyone?

Are you actually aware of who the major shareholders in BT are, and what percentage of BT they own?

Difficult to see how you can force those funds to only invest in either BT Group or new Openreach and not both.

If behaviour like this is on the next Labour policy board which a poster seems to be suggesting then might be a lot longer than five years before they ever come back into power.

In reply to a post by MCM:

I guess party lines were all a conspiracy too.

Please don't remind me! We (my parents) had a party line from when first installed in 1952 or so until they moved in the mid 70s. We all hated it but there was nothing we could do about it. A bit like today's EO lines.

And when the other party would spend all evening on te phone so you could never make or receive a call. Or they would hold theirs "off-hook" to ensure they were not disturbed when watching TV also meaning you had no service.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

I guess party lines were all a conspiracy too.

What is interesting is to look at the number of staff that were employed by GPO one presumes to keep Strowger running

Plenty of them! Each had their own specific function/area of expertise too - so no multi-skilling.

In reply to a post by MHC:

And nationalise Openreach - which planet are you on?

The same planet as the government which renationalised the national rail network one balmy Friday in October 2002.

This feels like d�j� vu (all over again!)

We had the same conversation a few weeks back. So, yes, to state again, circumstances were different with Railtrack; Railtrack at the point of renationalising was indebted to the tune of £8bn; and that became the main pretext; it was in dire financial distress.

The same pretext - financial distress and unfulfilled obligations could provide the backdrop for renationalising Openreach. With BT given the ultimatum: either roll-out FTTH to x thousand homes per week or face crippling financial penalties for non-fulfilment. That's how I would do it.

A fair valuation would be around £30billion, so where is your cheque book?

A realistic valuation of Openreach is that, like Network Rail, it's priceless. The nation would be crippled without it. That's why it belongs in public hands. Some things are just too valuable, too critical to be left to a profit-driven, penny-pinching private sector.

Cheers, Edwin

Forcing that on Openreach would kill the nascent Sky/TalkTalk fibre roll-outs which they say will reach 10 million homes, so you are sure that is what Sky wants?

To complete UK wide FTTH roll-out by 2020 would require 123,000 premises to be passed per week. Current workloads are delivering 200 to 300 cabinets per week and perhaps 1000 FTTP premises passed per week, so workforce size would need to scale up significantly or you do a lot longer roll-out.

An interesting bit from today's evidence by Sharon White of Ofcom to the Commons culture committee:

Asked about comments by BT chief executive Gavin Patterson that the separation of BT and Openreach, one possible outcome of an Ofcom investigation, could lead to �10 years of litigation and arguments�, White said: �I can�t say I�m easily intimidated. Our drive is what is going to be the best possible deal for the consumer.�

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/21/ofcom-b...

Has anyone watched it?

Lets hope that the comment is true, and similar intimidation by Sky will be dealt with in the same way. I suspect if the BT CEO had said the opposite i.e. something like 'we welcome the review and will comply without any qualms to all the decisions' there would have been a very quick devaluation of their stock as investors ran away.

Can imagine the Virgin Media CEO who holds the dominant position in the ultrafast market would say similar if investigation was to call for a divided VM.

Though the way Ofcom is getting into the consumer advice arena is hurting the independents, Ofcom sees itself as providing independent advice from the comparison calculators, but risks removing people like us and ispreview from the market.