It's cheaper to put in one system than multiple ones that don't cover everyone. There are also multiple utilities that dig up streets multiple times.

I worked to fix an old ladies phone back in the late 90’s . She told me she had moved into the newly built property with her parents as a small child in 1939. Her father thought they should get a telephone line fitted, and so ordered. Then not long after, WW2 broke out … things didn’t get sorted immediately after either. Finally, they waited 7 years to get the line installed.

The fault was that the hard wired handset which they had rented had finally given up the ghost. Beyond repair, (and I really tried) I had to fit an NTE, and left her with one of the temporary ‘trout phones’ we used to carry. She rang once the new handset was delivered, and I popped back after work to set it up for her.

A different time.

I recall beiing forced to have a party line in the 1960s, as some one else had moved into the area.and wanted a telephone line.

In reply to a post by stamford13:

It's cheaper to put in one system than multiple ones that don't cover everyone. There are also multiple utilities that dig up streets multiple times.

In broadband there are other things at play; if we had one national broadband "last mile" provider, for say FTTP and/or coax, would we have any offerings of symmetric speeds (e.g. 250/250, 500/500, 1024/1024) or even any offerings of 8 Gbps that are available today?

The problem of having one super huge, and one very very large provider is that the smaller providers have to fight in what has become a very small margin industry.

The ideas of the late 1980s were not wrong, but the money has changed radically.

In reply to a post by stamford13:

It's cheaper to put in one system than multiple ones that don't cover everyone.

Rose tinted glasses maybe or naiveite !!

Even if there was one infrastructure provider not everyone would be covered, the cost to reach some individual UK properties is well over £100,000 per property. Where would the money come from to get the infrastructure to those properties? Should tax payers money be used for this? do we have a bottomless pit of money to spend?

Also we already have a situation where niche providers using the Openreach network try to offload customer issues to Openreach engineers to fix, at least with the altnets they have no one but themselves to blame when issues occur.

Of course I accept there are areas not suitable for fibre to the premises. I can't see any technical obstacle for urban areas.
And we have one infrastructure provider anyway in Openreach (apart from in Hull). it is hamstrung by lack of joined-up planning and access.

Openreach is already the last mile wholesaler but it is hamstrung by poor joined-up planning and access such that rollouts are often slow and incomplete and duplicate other providers, some of which will go bust.

In reply to a post by stamford13:

And we have one infrastructure provider anyway in Openreach (apart from in Hull). it is hamstrung by lack of joined-up planning and access

Virgin Media is in a LOT of the built up area Openreach is in. They are also in Hull.

Virgin Media don’t normally use any of Openreach’s infrastructure, having started as the various cable firms in the 1990s they built their own. No such thing as PIA back then.

Edited by jchamier (Sun 21-Jun-26 19:54:56)

I've had plenty of these arguments in the past about "commercially not viable" when my problem living in an urban area that is a 10 minute walk to the City of London is more to do with wayleave agreement than my building not being commercially viable.

Most of the time in urban areas, particularly MDU buildings the problem is more to do with wayleave than it being commercially unviable.

For example, we have Community Fibre here and in the same estate where I live (Holland Estate, London) under the same management EastendHomes, Nexfibre (Virgin Media) was upgraded to a few buildings that are just next to mine 2 years ago. They now have both Community Fibre and Nexfibre.

Upon inquiry, it was still needing route approval to upgrade our building. So, despite a wayleave agreement and a letter 2 years ago we were left out. I even chased up SCCI Alphatrack via email who are responsible for the upgrades and they responded by saying they are waiting for my Housing Association to grant (pending route approval). They even offered that they can upgrade us with Openreach FTTP as well.

Since then I have given up and have not chased further as I am happy with Community Fibre for now.

Yet, at the same time you will find social housing residential buildings like Winterton House that have 4-5 FTTP overbuilds that is predominantly made up of social housing/council tenants. These tenants don't even pay service charge but get more privilege than some private buildings like the Heron Tower in Barbican that have only ADSL and Hyperoptic. Hyperoptic is worse in this regard than Community Fibre as they don't even have a few other wholesale options to switch to.

It really is a postcode lottery. There is no formula that I see that suggests that one area is more viable than another when I see important places like in the City of London that have no fibre at all! And less important areas having multiple FTTP overbuilds.

In reply to a post by stamford13:

Openreach is already the last mile wholesaler but it is hamstrung by poor joined-up planning and access such that rollouts are often slow and incomplete and duplicate other providers, some of which will go bust.

If you believe there should only be one infrastructure provider for urban areas then how far does your mindset go for other things? for example should there only be one supermarket chain or even one bank chain to reduce the amount of duplication in urban areas, would this make regulation a lot easier for the various sectors 😎 The fact that we allow altnets to build out should be considered positive as they are private companies who are investing their money. Do you believe that if we never had altnets and only a single infrastructure company (take Openreach for example) we would be further down the road to blanket full fibre than we are today?

Edited by PCJM40 (Sun 21-Jun-26 23:22:41)