Is this anything to do with the WAG getting in to bed with Geo on the Fibrespeed project to fibre up Business parks in north Wales where currently there's no-one else but BT?

The Welsh assembly gets its money from English taxpayers just like the sweaties. No wonder England is so behind, all the money is being robbed!!!

I'm sure BT would be gnawing your arm off up to the shoulder if you went for that one:

1) How it looks now: BT builds operates and owns a fibre network. BT does its damndest to keep the costs of building and operating same as low as possible to maximise the profit generated from end users.

2) Your way: BT* builds (and bids to operate) a fibre network owned and paid for by the Government. BT does its damndest to make the build as expensive as possible (unforseen cost overruns above their nice, low bid to do same) to maximise its profit over what it has to spend to lease back bits of it to sell on to the end users. After securing the 10 year operating lease, they find that due to some build decisions the operating costs are higher than originally predicted and after renegotiation the goverment decides to double the operating fees (oh yes they will - see HMRC and the Mapeley STEPS deal for an example).

With option 2 they get paid three times! Once for putting it together in the first place, once for running it and once for selling it on. Also you have the additional costs of the gravy-train fibre quango in the middle to cover. Who pays for the pork? That'll be us the end users then. Either by inflated lease costs driving up the retail price or in our taxes providing subsidy to the fibre quango to keep the lease costs down.

*Who else can they get to do it?

Won't someone please think of the poor sheep.