BT Fiber Infrastructure Plans 'Fatal' To Competition

twoheadedboy writes "BT today revealed it is to start selling its Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) for fiber broadband product to other providers later this month, but the announcement was met with one particularly cold response. Geo Networks, which is helping deliver superfast networks in Wales in partnership with the Welsh Assembly, said it was going to withdraw bidding for Government-provided BDUK funds and in all next-generation access sales. 'Inadequacies of the current PIA product are fatal to infrastructure competition,' he added. 'The Government's stated desire for a competitive market in the provision of new optical fiber infrastructure is at risk of complete failure.'"

Re:main problem is backhaul

[niftydude]

BT was initially a government run organisation for many years before it was privatized. So they are basically a government created monopoly which was then sold off -mostly to cronies of the government of the era.

This isn't either the free market or the competitive market at work - it is a monopoly unfairly created by the government (by which I mean the public's tax dollars) screwing everyone else over.

Re:The spin on this story is a bit silly

[Cato]

It is anticompetitive because Geo and others need to use the PIA fibre from BT to 'backhaul' from a village to a larger town or city. With the backhaul, they can provide local connections, maybe using wireless - without the backhaul, BT actually provides the connections to ISPs for resale, hence there is far less competition.

Re:main problem is backhaul

[dadioflex]

BT inherited the copper monopoly at the time, and legislation opened up their exchanges to competition. But you hit the nail on the head. BT innovate, run the infrastructure and handle all the external servicing. Even if you get your fibre product from someone other than BT, it's a BT engineer that comes out to fix it if something goes wrong.

BT do NOT have a fibre monopoly. Talking about them as if they did is reactionary. Virgin Media, while not available to 100% of the UK and saddled with crazy debt they're slowly paying off, are generally the ones to be beaten by BT, and not the other way around.

BT Retail, or BT Wholesale?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as "BT". There is "BT Retail", which rents phonelines and is an ISP. Then there is "BT Wholesale", which provides infrastructure to ISPs, including BT Retail, but also many others.

For ADSL, that works quite well: "BT" (retail) talk to BT Wholesale in the same way that other ADSL providers do, allowing competition. The only issue is that small ISPs find it hard to compete with the big ones, because of the big jump in price bands between having a few customers, and having a few more.

BT retail has a shitty broadband service (throttling, IP address allocation issues, and so on), so no pros are interested in their fibre. BT Wholesale's fibre SHOULD be another story, and fibre provided via other ISPs like BeThere SHOULD be fine... except that BeThere don't offer fibre yet, for some reason.

So what's the setup for fibre? How come other ISPs aren't able to pick this up and sell it to customers? Is fibre not required to be provided wholesale? Is it being sold by BT Wholesale in a way that favors BT Retail over other providers? If so, these are issues that Ofcom should be taking VERY seriously.