I wonder what percentage of BT build is "overbuild" in the circumstances you describe and how much is not related to that at all. I suspect that the overbuild is very small compared to the rest of the rollout.

Overbuild is a hot topic and to be frank I've seen some cabinets go in that make little sense, but as the gap funding is adjusted to take account of overbuild, a project is contributing less for those ones.

To do a proper analysis would take a lot of people a lot of time, particularly as to get to the bottom of it, rather than 'opinion' one would need access to historical roll-out data from both Openreach and the alt-net and also co-operation from BDUK projects to review the OMR data they received.

Cost versus benefit starts to look dodgy. Certainly some overbuilds where people complain that BT turned up mob handed are areas where a vague plan has existed for some time before the mob turned up.

Hi Andrew. The overbuild I meant wasn't the BDUK but where BT have gone into an area after an alternate provider (such as wireless) had gone in because BT had said it wasn't viable. I know in the early days of ADSL there were areas where wireless providers went out of business because BT then enabled the area but I think percentage wise it is a pretty small number of properties affected.

The argument being put forwards was that BT target areas that get alternatives that they had previously said weren't viable - I suspect BT are not quite that mercenary and would not target an area just because another provider started to deliver there.

>They have and continue to benefit from being the default and incumbent.

And that is what grinds my gears, people don't want Openreach to be dominant but as soon as poor broadband is mentioned they all run to go ask Openreach for a solution.

Very well said.

Please don't try playing word semantics when you know damn well what people mean.

You really do appear to be the one having difficulty comprehending and using the English language. Significant market presence in some areas is NOT a monopoly otherwise for example there would be no B4RN, Gigaclear or CityFibre.

If the commercial world then its commercial competition, unless there is legislation to give different firms the franchise for broadband in an area.