Re: "where Openreach’s profits go,.. back to the BT Group. The group's budget..controlled by BT."
"Remember back in 2008 we were talking about: 100mbps up and down at £100 pa, to 100% of homes in the UK "
Back in 1984(!) The japanese were taking about 140Mb/s symetric (E4) to the home to 100% of the population as their target. At the time I was involved in the deployment of state-of-the-art 140Mb/s (per channel) 7+1 microwave bearer systems and whilst we wondered what people would do with it there was no doubt the japanese govt would achieve it before the end of the decade.
Back in 2001 the Koreans were _achieving 1Gb/s.
I keep banging on about what's happened in New Zealand because it's germane to the discussion: In an effort to stave off government intervention after 20 years of an increasingly rapacious telco, the incumbent aped the BT/Openreach model and tried to sell it to the government there as "enough to ensure a fair market" - the NZ government _documented_ the ways that BT are able to continue manipulating the british market (including damaging the UK GDP) and act in blatently anticompetitive manners (eg, the way it's been able to shut down rural broadband initiatives) - and having no desire to see that kind of thing happen in New Zealand as a continuation of 20 years of rape&pillage, ordered that Chorus (the NZ version of Openreach) be completely cleaved from the incumbent - by the simple expedient of withholding any further broadband funding until it happened.
Yes, the NZ regulators were braver than Ofcom - but just like Ofcom they were completely subject to regulatory capture and had spent a decade claiming that all was well in the face of increasingly loud complaints from across the spectrum before grudgingly admitting maybe things weren't so rosy, but just like Ofcom not actually doing anything about it. The actual shove came from the NZ ministry of Commerce (Equiv Competition and Markets Authority) to stepped in and forced the issue.
People really should look at what's happened - the exact same arguments against breaking up BT were all raised there too. They've all turned out to be fabrications.
Whilst a vertically integrated monopoly makes some sense as a regulated government entity in a completely regulated market (ie, the old days), it is damaging to the entire UK economy to allow a privately owned vertically integrated monopoly to exist and continue to leverage that monopoly to engage in rent-seeking behaviour. BT must be broken up and steps taken to ensure that Openreach cannot be captured by any entity or cartel.