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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.'"
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.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
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.