In reply to a post by ian72:

How would you break up their monopoly to ensure customer have choice?

Would you break it up in to lots of small area based companies? Wouldn't that just mean that costs would go up (ie lack of economy of scale and difficulties getting investment) and could also end up in the US situation where people still only have one choice in a particular area.

It is easy to say break them up but the alternative could be very much worse.

Very much like Hull.... Where at one point you could only get a service from Kcom @ very poor speeds and expensive prices....

At least 15 years ago, NTL installed cables when there were major road works. Has there been any more activity on getting installs to houses... Nope... And it seems there is no chance as Virgin are not prepared to spend the money to finish the job off.
Still thankfully Openreach have spent the money and we now have great speeds.

So the OP thinks that new builds should get a choice on install as soon as they move in.... oh how that will be a major shock to the companies.
Perhaps that requires a bit more thought by the developers of the sites. Who seem more interested in chucking houses up. I have seen estates of 50 ish houses spring up in under 3 months... Yet the OP expects a infrastructure to be in place for them.... I think that should be down the the developer to sort out. Can't expect Openreach/virgin etc to drop everything else in the area to service the houses. When they are already struggling to service these area's.

A major block is that on many new builds when the first people move in the roads are unadopted and thus are private and code powers do not apply either, so rolling out needs more interaction with developers.