Or it could be spent on more FTTP ?

but of course no longer will BT retail be able to use openreach income to subsidise its operation -- this is false and incorrect

retail funds it self -- what utter rubbish to iintimate that retail is funded by opnreach

In reply to a post by TheEulerID:

I don't think you have any idea of the scale of what might have to be done.

Most people don't understand the scale behind telco systems in general. I'm reminded over the Douglas Adams quote from HHG:

In reference to en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Space:

Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.

Now, the "ordinary" IS/IT systems probably aren't quite as vast as the operational, data-shifting systems. Though inbetween, there will be a lot of O&M and administration systems.

But a lot of those IS/IT systems are things that have existed for a long time, and have grown over decades, rather than merely been replaced. Dealing with the idiosyncrasies within these systems is probably a job akin to the y2k clock issue. There's probably a lot of Cobol programmers who would love BT to be forced to upgrade their internal systems

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I predicted 2 years ago that g.fast would be cabinet only and was mocked for suggesting such a thing, but it was a given with BT's history.

Does your prediction say that BT will stop at cab-only, and go no further?

You couldn't have any downtime either when the switch to separate data centres etc was being done. Occasionally when OR systems go down it's utter chaos. You end up with a massive backlog of jobs so the system just has to stay on.

State IT systems are a bad example, as government projects are a classic example of been able to rip a customer off.

Also developing a new IT system from scratch is not the same as splitting up an existing one.

It is well known in my business circle how easy it is to overcharge government/council customers, it is so easy to make them over pay for stuff. because they are entities that are not for profit and are effectively immune to going bankrupt they dont have the same cost controls as private companies.

Lets put things into perspective to give an idea.

For 10 billion pounds one can have e.g. 50 million enterprise class servers, does the NHS have one server for almost every UK resident? very doubtful.

it funds itself in simple terms, but the accepted profit margin is reduced because the BT shareholders take the profit margin for the entire group, so in other words BT retail can have a slim margin because its compensated by a larger margin from other areas of BT.

Its not rocket science, do you really think competing providers on high cost BT wholesale backhaul could pay the huge sums for sports rights, give the sports service to free to customers, and charge the prices BT do for broadband?

Sky is the closest example and their combined tv/sports package is nowhere near the price of what BT charge.

Openreach tried suggesting 2) but the CPs didn't want it http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2015/12/bt-open...

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

2 - Keep openreach as part of BT

So the simple answer is..

BT is openreach and they are no longer allowed to supply internet access to the public.
So to put it simply they have to sell off the BT internet side.
BT/Openreach can still supply basic phone service to public, but nothing more.

This would be far, the cheapest and easiest option.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

Lets put things into perspective to give an idea.

For 10 billion pounds one can have e.g. 50 million enterprise class servers, does the NHS have one server for almost every UK resident? very doubtful.

I'm not quite convinced that I can get an enterprise class server, setup with always-on power, HVAC and networking devices, with complete storage and backup system, for £200. Never mind adding the duplication for truly high availability.

I'm pretty sure that this particular perspective is rather wrong.

As I said previously, most people don't understand scale. Attempting to relate a sum of money back to a single computer entirely misses the point about what it actually costs to achieve high availability at scale, merely perpetuates that lack of understanding.