Ofcom will do as little as they can get away with tho.

When I emailed the new CEO a few weeks back after my contact in ofcom got told to stop communicating with me, the response I got was on one issue is they think there is no market failure on landline line rental and call costs. To them because some tiny providers offer non inflated prices there is no issue.

Ofcom is really a regulator that's there to make sure all reseller's of BT sourced services can make money fairly between each other, its not a regulator for the consumer, they only provide minimum regulation on retail services, the majority of it is on wholesale only.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The biggest quandary is what will work for two thirds of the UK may not work for the other third.

IMHO, this is the key point (though I think the threshold is somewhere around 80% now).

In today's Infrastructure Report (whatever they changed the name to, alongside dumbing down the actual content), one main headline was "The focus should now be on delivering better broadband to all, so everyone can benefit".

If Ofcom truly want to act as the consumer's friend for rural consumers (ie the "everyone" that still needs to benefit) then they need to stop acting in a way that focuses on "cheapest". If they continue down that avenue, then they are only acting on behalf of the ones who live in competitive areas.

If there's a split coming, I can only think that it has to work in two completely ways, for two completely different markets.

Perhaps one arm of Openreach would be meant to work with Sky and TT against VM (as the other infrastructure owner), while the other needs to work with altnets in a supportive way, perhaps almost charitable.

Surely that's a simple enough fix for OFCOM,

ISP's must charge a single price to all it's customers regardless of location and can not refuse to take on a customer based on their location.

Some how I don't think they'll go for that, but the final third or so issue still needs to be addressed as they can't be left behind and if others have to pay a little more so be it.