Maybe UKPN should attend the next PAC meeting to explain their variable costs.

Hopefully, BT and the others would have done their work before the road was finished and surfaced!

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Maybe UKPN should attend the next PAC meeting to explain their variable costs.

That would be an interesting discussion.

I thought the answer, though, was roughly the same as for the financial problems of rural broadband: Connecting to power used to have a similar cost for any line, with the company using the knowledge of long-term future income to offset any major incremental costs for one line.

However, the appearance of competition in the market meant reduced prices as "standard", but no more long-term offset: Any line that costs more than "standard" must pay more than standard, a lot more.

It seems that regulation of mature markets like this, imposing competitive tendencies, has a serious knock-on effect. A law of unintended consequences.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Hopefully, BT and the others would have done their work before the road was finished and surfaced!

If the developer wanted to allow a quasi-monopoly for someone like IFNL (maybe kickbacks are involved?) then they wouldn't allow BT to be involved early enough.

Roads and paths tend to be finished quite early in the development - I guess it allows the workers to get around the site easily - so you really need BT's full involvement right at the start. Once you've started selling some of the houses, and now have public access to the site, it is already too late.