Friday 12 April 2013

Fibre Unbundling

Back in June 2010 when BT agreed with Ofcom that it could charge what it liked for access to it's new fibre based broadband access service, Ofcom gave them four years of freedom.  We're now three years into this, so perhaps next year will see some changes in the market.

The deal BT struck was two fold, first to forgo caps on pricing - the subject of criticism from TalkTalk and others in recent weeks - and secondly to offer unbundled service rather than bare cables, called "Virtual Unbundled Line Access" or VULA, back then.  This limits competitors to reselling the same services that BT retails, and given BT control the price; this isn't competition at all.


Monday 8 April 2013

BT's Twisted Reality

An article in today's Telegraph reports on comments made by BT's chief Ian Livingston in response to calls by TalkTalk for more regulation on BT's broadband roll-out.  Interestingly, whilst the Torygraph is happy to promote BT's side of the argument, the original call for regulation by TalkTalk went unreported in the paper.

Naturally BT don't want more regulation on their business but Livingston (and his underling in Openreach, Liv Garvey) is playing such a game of words that beggars belief.