It might, but in a world where plenty of plans are underway for more FTTP anyway, lots of people will get the impression that the acceleration of FTTP deployments that has been underway for a while now is down to this announcement

Ta .

I knew Retail isn't called that any more, and have several times in the past called it BT Consumer in the forums. The problem is nobody else does, so it's unlikely it will catch on. Then no-one will know what I'm talking about.

What I didn't know was that Business was split from it. I assumed it was simply another branch within Consumer. Which once it is pointed out, as you just did, was a completely daft assumption.

There used to be one called Operate, wasn't there? Which will now be a large part of TSO? I've seen a few posts by a couple of posters mentioning TSO, but didn't go looking for what it meant. I did realise when I found the page I linked to, but didn't have the full list of responsibilities you give.

Thanks again for the deeper insight .

For a while I had no idea if sky and co were genuinely bemoaning the lack of investment in FTTP but gave them the benefit of the doubt, if that was the case sky would not be happy with ofcom's decision, given they are happy I now see their true colours in this saga where they ultimately seem to just want openreach pricing to be as low as possible to maximise their own profits and continue to block end user's access to openreach.

You are right in that of course there is FTTP projects happening haphazard over the country, and it wouldnt surprise me if ofcom try to link these to this decision.

What a lot of people probably don't understand is the degree to which OR will be dependent on many services from BT Group, which they will presumably buy in. I very much doubt that OR is going to spend a huge amount of money setting up its own data centres, its own software architecture teams. It might even buy in some of its HR services from BT Group. There is also going to be a great deal of sharing of building space too.

It's rather a long way from a completely autonomous, self-contained company which would be a radically more expensive thing to achieve. I suspect that they will try and keep to a minimum the costs of this structural reorganisation.

One other thing that will be interesting to know is the accounting for the physical network infrastructure, which which will be legally owned by BT Group. I'm assuming that, as the legal owner, BT Group will carry all the depreciation charges, financing costs and will also be entitled to whatever regulated return that Ofcom permits on the estimated value of that asset (or, at least, the price regulated parts of that asset). Assuming that OR will be billing the wholesale customers (as now), then there must surely be a bill from BT Group for the use of those assets.

Just how transparent these service charges will be is another question. There will have to be separate accounts, but they won't obviously be published as the legal duty to publish (rather than produce) accounts for a private limited company are rather low.

What I don't get from my first read-through a few days ago of the BT/Ofcom agreement, is that Sky, TalkTalk et al are being invited to invest in Openreach.

That seems incompatible with all the stuff in the agreement about BT Group retaining this that and the other. The sort of thing you are expanding on here.

With profits taken off the OR balance sheet into the group. That's if I remember correctly. I must admit my eyes were glazing over from the combined legalese, waffle and accounting setup details at that point. But I was quite tired so maybe a re-read is needed.

I can't believe any outside companies are going to invest in Openreach with the only possible reward being a better service. They'll want a demonstrable ROI for their own shareholders.

Anything written by Ofcom, not just about telecoms, is in my opinion always a contender for the worst official writing award of the year. The sort of thing most decent businesses stopped putting out decades ago. Even the several Acts of Parliament I have dug into for one reason or another over the years are easier, and dealing with much more convoluted issues.

I really think it's going to be unworkable. An inedible dogs' breakfast, even to a dog.

Edit: Surely any infrastructure investments by Openreach will become part of Openreach LoB assets, which won't belong to Openreach Limited?

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 13-Mar-17 12:17:21)

There is no mechanism for third party companies to invest directly in Openreach. What they can do is work with Openreach to produce a network. That might range from using just PIA2 to deploy its own fibre, or, possibly, a hybrid, using elements of an OR network (such as the dark fibre option for backhaul). That might mean OR investing some of the capital budget on behalf of BT Group. Possibly extending passive infrastructure or extending the fibre network.

Investing for a backhaul network for a wireless network operator might be an option too.

However, I don't find this very convincing. First, all this can be done already and it's difficult to see who is going to pour money into large-scale domestic fibre distribution networks, especially in the areas where both VM and OR operate networks. I can see it being used for limited purposes, but not some massive third network.

The other point which everybody seems to have missed is that OR is not a neutral party in all this. It seems to be obvious to me that OR will not want to see its own market share eroded by what would be networks that compete with its own FTTC, FTTP & G.FAST products. Ever since OR started operating fibre-to-the-cabinet options, it was directly competing with its own LLU customers. I suppose if OR could pick up a fat contract to manage an operate such a mass third party network it might help, but it all looks like a stretch to me.