You forget that several of the big names also sell via Cityfibre where it's available.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I think the network should have stayed government owned or be a non-profit-making company and split Openreach away from BT.

Early Thatcher era decision ; and the much later response to try and give competition was the multiple cable companies (that had to merge to survive into VM) as the hope was fixed line phones from cable would compete with BT. Mobile phones killed that, and so eventually the Ofcom required split out of Openreach from the rest of BT Group happened. It isn't really worth revisiting, the 1984 privatisation was 41 years ago.

Hopefully if VM opens their network to wholesale (lots of talk, little action) on both VM and nexfibre owned parts, then this would be a true competitor to OR due to size/coverage. CityFibre is trying, but comparatively tiny in scale against VM in coverage (homes / businesses passed).

Edited by jchamier (Fri 02-May-25 10:21:03)

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

What chance have alt nets got, when the majority of people on FTTC and ADSL for that matter will just stay with the ISP they are with to change to FTTP?

Say someone with Sky on FTTC, will stay with Sky when they go to FTTP, so stay on Openreach network, this is the advantage that openreach has.

You've lost me with this argument, I suspect you're working backwards from your position of "Openreach are bad" and trying to fit arguments to that point, and you've successfully derailed yet another thread with your obsession. I'll take some of the blame for biting and will endeavour not to do it again.

Why is of any concern to you that a customer is happy enough with their ISP to choose to upgrade with them, and that ISP is happy enough with Openreach that they choose to use their FTTP product? What would you argue should happen instead of this upgrade path?

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I think the network should have stayed government owned or be a non-profit-making company and split Openreach away from BT.

None of this is relevant to how they are regulated *now*, and you seem to be arguing that they are expensive but also Ofcom should force them to keep being expensive.

Edited by jpm (Fri 02-May-25 09:43:16)

Probably because you have a very blinkered outlook and dont accept any balance to your arguments.
Sure they made many mistakes, and could of pushed for fibre earlier, but that completely ignores the political , financial , commercial and regulatory barriers that they have faced for 4 decades . Your very simplified outlook does you no favours and TBH you seem very naive.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

You forget that several of the big names also sell via Cityfibre where it's available.

No, I have not

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Early Thatcher era decision ; and the much later response to try and give competition was the multiple cable companies (that had to merge to survive into VM) as the hope was fixed line phones from cable would compete with BT. Mobile phones killed that, and so eventually the Ofcom required split out of Openreach from the rest of BT Group happened. It isn't really worth revisiting, the 1984 privatisation was 41 years ago.

Hopefully if VM opens their network to wholesale (lots of talk, little action) on both VM and nexfibre owned parts, then this would be a true competitor to OR due to size/coverage. CityFibre is trying, but comparatively tiny in scale against VM in coverage (homes / businesses passed).

But openreach have not split from BT, it is still owned by the BT group, it is a load of baloney just done to make us think they are separate, taking the BT name off the Van, what the use of that, it is still owned by BT.

We don't have Vm around here, suppose to be having nexfibre next year, we will see how that goes, not that i want much to do with Virgin either.

Zzoomm have merged with full fibre, or been taken over, or have taken over full fibre. They are a wholesale network, we will see what happens in the future, maybe the zzoomm network will be wholesale and Zzoomm will just be an ISP on that network.

I am happy with what I have got and while I never wanted to move to FTTP, I am glad I did now, even if it just to put the finger up to BT/Openreach, not that it will bother them, but makes me feel better.

it is the mobile networks that is going to be the problem soon, I am not fond of BT. so EE ios out, Vodafone is a complete and total waste of space, sadly they are merging with Three, which is the network I am using at the moment with Smarty and O2 is part of Virgin, we can't run a network to save out lives.
So I am stuffed, will just have to stay with Smarty and hope.

In reply to a post by jpm:

Why is of any concern to you that a customer is happy enough with their ISP to choose to upgrade with them, and that ISP is happy enough with Openreach that they choose to use their FTTP product? What would you argue should happen instead of this upgrade path?

Never said it was a concern, just said they had the advantage because of it

None of this is relevant to how they are regulated *now*, and you seem to be arguing that they are expensive but also Ofcom should force them to keep being expensive.

Ofcom should force the company to split, and I mean split, not the false stuff we have had for years, Get BT to sell openreach.

In reply to a post by witchunt:

Probably because you have a very blinkered outlook and dont accept any balance to your arguments.
Sure they made many mistakes, and could of pushed for fibre earlier, but that completely ignores the political , financial , commercial and regulatory barriers that they have faced for 4 decades . Your very simplified outlook does you no favours and TBH you seem very naive.

I know they have had restrictions, and so they should.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Ofcom should force the company to split, and I mean split, not the false stuff we have had for years, Get BT to sell openreach.

There were well described reasons why Ofcom didn't force this or refer to competition commission, including the likelihood it would fail in the courts when BT Group Plc appealed, and it would potentially cost the Treasury a large amount of money the UK taxpayer didn't want to spend. I would reasearch the reasons.

Altnets have a major take-up from my observation in London.
Just in my building alone 38 Flats out of the 81 have joined Community Fibre. Now, this does not seem like that much of a big deal but given the fact that there's not enough advertisement and not many people know of its availability, that's a pretty good number.

Some people (particularly tenants) remain with their FTTC provider out of the fear that should they move out they cannot move their existing Altnet to a premise where it is not available. FTTC gives them that peace of mind.

My problem with Community Fibre for example, is that they don't remove CGNAT for packages below 2.5Gbps or 5Gbps. Some people said they managed to get it removed with special request.
For reasons such as this and the fact that Openreach has far more wholesale options, I support Openreach FTTP being available. But I also don't like how much Openreach delayed their roll out over the years and indeed did milk cash using copper.

In other premises I see entire block of flats where everyone has either switched to Hyperoptic or Community Fibre. Perhaps here in London given that majority of the MDUs are served by either Hyperoptic or Community Fibre the take up rate is much higher as tenants don't need to worry about leaving their flat for another building.

The only reason I want Openreach FTTP is because I don't want to be restricted with a single Altnet or two. Maybe I might desire Virgin Media Nexfibre over another 2nd Altnet like Hyperoptic and only with the promise of it offering wholesale. I have the hope of having a provider that doesn't do CGNAT or has better quality router, 4 LAN ports and better customer service.

People are busy with their lives and it is inertia where people remain with old technology. For example, my dad should upgrade his old PC Windows 8.1, Quad Core 8400, 4GB RAM and old Hard Drive to SSD. He will benefit from it hugely but it is that hassle and inertia where time just flies and no initiative has yet been taken. I know I can search and perhaps even build a new computer. I upgraded my old faulty hard drive (that was throwing errors) to SSD a few months and can see huge improvement increase. I wished I did this years ago, but yet I had to have problems for me to be urged to do something about it. The hassle of replacing things and reinstalling Windows from scratch is what deterred me.

Now I know the same hassle I would have if I quit BT and joined Community Fibre. I run into the headache of not being able to port forward or have to find a way to mitigate this. Also, I have port forwarded a number of TCP/UDP ports that are required for certain games. I have to do this from scratch again even if I chose to switch to another provider on the same network.