So, calls today from BT and an email telling me its all good to go. Connection works but this is still my ADSL speed; around 7 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up. Will raise a fault tomorrow.

BT fault page does not work; it resets the line/circuit after finding that it is running slowly - but then times out and wont refresh. Hopeless. Meanwhile I've had yet another text from BT saying order is complete. It isn't. Nothing has changed. Waiting for a callback.

Lucky for BT that my work with Ofcom is about broadcasting and not telecoms.

Wow, BT are really hopeless. Three times I've had callbacks from Level 2 engineering that haven't happened. If I call them, I invariable get cut off. Finally managed to speak to someone in sales who was very helpful and seemed to be UK based so I could hear and understand them. But I need to get an update from Faults apparently before they can reverse out my order and put it back in. Seems that the new cabinet, with stickers from my employer announcing availability of fast broadband is misleading as there is no capacity and no one at BT seems to know when there will be any. If they didn't have a monopoly, would they stay in business?

BT don't have a monopoly.

There are over 500 service providers to chose from.

But many of those providers rely on BT infrastructure. So, from a capacity perspective in an area where BT infrastructure is the only viable option then it is a "monopoly" in many ways. But, over half the country do have alternatives to BT infrastructure so no BT monopoly in "most" of the country.

What is to stoop those providers installing their own network? No significant legal, regulatory or logistical barriers - just that they do not want to invest their own money but want someone else to and then complain about the costs of service.

I'm not suggesting that BT are stopping anyone from installing their own but as you say it is the economics. Other providers can find it difficult to move into an area knowing that a lot of people would just buy BT anyway if it was available. BT have largely had benefits of the physical infrastructure (ie ducts, poles, etc) in place already from the phone network. Others now have some ability to share these but I guess it is not seen as practical for most other providers for whatever reasons.

In reality BT are best placed in many areas to deliver services at a cost effective level.

They do seem to have a monopoly on fibre connections though. Since the problem seems to be with Openreach. I've been with BT for 17 years as a service provider; when it works, its all fine. The

Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

So BT( or rather, Openreach) invest billions to provide fibre based broadband and get slated because they have a "monopoly".

If Openreach didn't invest in fibre based broaband, they'd be slated for not investing enough of their profits.

What about Virgin? They don't let anyone use their kit what so ever, now that's a monopoly.

Change the record.

Keep in mind BT's historic and ancient origins, going back to individual phone companies "all over the place", with only Kingston upon Hull being effectively a remnant of those days.

Hull Kingston Telephone System owned and run by Hull Corporation.City Council - which may still have "a finger in the pie" - as I am not too sure of its more recent history.

Virgin etc were set up over a century later, as public limited companies, not even existing in the days of the "nationalised" PO Telephones. And were set up basically with only the delivery of Cable TV, and that was to relatively few, generally intensively populated towns.