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.'"

Comments

main problem is backhaul

[Anonymous Coward]

BT is willing to charge very little for the fibre to the customer but gouges on the fibre backhaul to the provider network. if the rest of the players had any balls they would walk out too.
without backhaul fibre is pointless. same thing in canada with Bell charging very little per customer for 3rd party ISPs but charging $22,000 per gigE for backhaul. same set of monopolistic thieves keeping the internet at crappy levels in first world countries.

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:main problem is backhaul

[iserlohn]

BT is no longer a crown corporation. One could argue that the service it provided when it was public-owned is much better than it is now that it has privatized. Infrastructure and utilities is probably the most suitable application of a public ownership, and it has always been difficult to ensure competition in a market-based model due to the capital investment and economies of scale once the infrastructure is in place. This is prevalent in both telecommunications and energy sectors catering to the end-user.

Of course, this also applies to things like rail transport which require extensive infrastructure - take British Rail for example.

Re:main problem is backhaul

[GauteL]

"by which I mean the public's tax dollars"

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Re:main problem is backhaul

[Bert64]

The government should re-nationalise the infrastructure, and then run it on a break even basis...

Physical infrastructure is a natural monopoly because if the massive up front investment required to actually build it, and the massive inefficiencies of building multiple sets, so it makes sense for this to be government controlled.

Re:main problem is backhaul

[Bert64]

Yes this is something that so often gets overlooked, connection speeds get faster and faster but the data caps are getting lower... All this means is that you can hit the cap and get disconnected more quickly.

When they offered 512k connections with no data cap, that worked out to around 150GB/month downloaded (not counting upload) if you ran it flat out... They also offered 2mb connections which could pull 600GB.
Now they offer a 40mb connection with a 200GB limit, which in actual fact makes it more like "640k connection, burstable to 40mb for limited periods".

What we really need, in combination with fibre, is small community ISPs... That way you can get high speed uncontended connections with those living near you, which is great for gaming and torrent like protocols... Then other common data can be cached locally too.

And yes, the price of backhaul is ridiculous, and that just includes the line from the exchange to the isp, so even downloading from servers hosted by the ISP is costly... That's why most ISPs don't bother with caching anymore, internet transit is cheap, bt backhaul is not.

Re:main problem is backhaul

[petermgreen]

I remember my parents talking about what phone service used to be like. I remember them talking of messages like "all the lines to birmingham are in use". I remember phone call prices that made the phone something you used for short calls to get important information across. Long chats on the phone were a rare indulgence.

Nowadays the phone network seems to connect calls extremely reliably and unmetered call packages are common so you can chat as much as you like (provided you keep each individual call less than an hour).

How much of this is down to competition (enabled by regulators forcing BT to share infrastructure) and how much is down to technological improvements I do not know

Re:main problem is backhaul

[GameboyRMH]

Hey leave your logic out of this! If the government ran the Internet's infrastructure, there would be no upgra...oh wait...well it would be bloody expensi...aw damn...well you bet they'd spy on...shit.

The point is...shut up commie!

Re:main problem is backhaul

[FireFury03]

Nowadays the phone network seems to connect calls extremely reliably and unmetered call packages are common so you can chat as much as you like (provided you keep each individual call less than an hour).

BT's unmetered packages concern me somewhat. They are free up to an hour, but after an hour the per-minute charges are far higher than you'd pay on a metered package. What is the purpose of the hour limit? Presumably to trap people into accidentally overrunning the hour and inadvertently running up their bill. When tariffs are _designed_ to cause people to accidentally incur unexpected charges, I start questioning the ethics of the company involved...

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.

Competition, yes

[HopefulIntern]

BT fibre is indeed harmful to the competition. The competition being Virgin fibre. The good news is, there will no longer be a monopoly on fibre. The bad news is, those of us who do not have Virgin fibre, and live in broadband notspots, will not see any BT fibre either. Again, this is for the purposes of competition. BT have actually said they will roll out fibre to my exchange by March next year. However, the fine print says that "rolling out fibre" to the exchange means just that; to the exchange. The fibre itself will only run to select cabinets, in my case, only 50% of them. Guess which ones? The ones that already have streets cabled with Virgin fibre, so they can poach Virgin customers. BT already get my £15 per month for the abysmal 0.7mbps they provide, and have no interest in bringing me a better service since I am already paying them.

Ridiculous employment laws?

[fireylord]

Sigh, you mean laws that mean people can't end up being at the receiving end of an autonomous unchallengable unfair firing? This is something that people in the UK right now are rather glad of since it gives them just a little bit more job security than they would have if employers were able to treat their 'human resource' like so much chattel?

The political axegrinders are out in force today.