What time do you call this, BT? Late, state-funded broadband rollout plods on

Re: "Not viable"

"Bear in mind that regardless of what service you use, there will be customers than a provider doesn't make money off of, and other whales that more than cover the lossy customers. BT could have easily been using the fat cat areas to fund those areas that were not "viable"."

I think that would be illegal for BT, or for any provider with a significant advantage in a competitive market.

If the customers in one town aren't profitable, serving them means making a loss - subsidising them from profitable business elsewhere. That means any new provider wanting to launch in that town couldn't possibly compete because the subsidy is anti-competitive. It's the first step towards creating a monopoly and is illegal.

Re: "Not viable"

That would be legal but where would you run the ducts too? The telephone exchange or some other point? Are you going to just run past homes, or up to the front door? Not every premises owner will want you on their land, but if you don't then the providers you sell to still need to dig every time they sell something. If they do dig the last bit, is that duct exclusively theirs or will you compel them to make it available to other providers?

It's going to cost the council about 2,500 euros per house to get to the door. If only one in four houses want service, how will the council recoup the ten thousand euro cost per household? If it's less than that - one in ten say - that problem just became huge.

Finding the money is also tricky - if the council covers a moderately sized town - say 10,000 premises - homes and businesses, that's 25 million euros. You have to do every premises else voters start muttering and complaining about their local taxes. Even then, voters who choose not to have the service will still have paid the tax. Poorer and older voters subsidising a service used mainly by younger, richer residents - how many pensioners do you know with 4K tellys and multiple devices?

Most local politicians would decide that all of the above doesn't add up to much of a vote winner.

Re: Baffling

"So there are no rural areas of the UK without mains water? (Such as around half of the Scottish Highlands)

And there are no rural areas without access to mains electricity? (Such as around half of the Hebridean Islands)"

What planet does The First Dave live on? Our cottage nestles behind the Summer Isles and has had mains electricity since the early 1950s and has had mains water for about half a century. And as for Hebridean isles (inhabited ones, anyway), which islands with 100 inhabitants have no mains electricity?

If broadband were rolled out as efficiently as mains electricity was in the middle of last century, there'd be very few rural areas without broadband.

Re: Baffling

""...to think that mains water, power grid and tarmac roads all got rolled out to 'unprofitable' areas of the UK without the big fuss"

The cost was socialised. Urban dwellers subsidised rural ones"

Not the case. Initially, many of these new technologies were charged at the rate the market could bear by private organisations. Electricity, for example, was charge at a higher rate to rural areas pre-WW2 as the line plant etc to deliver it to remote locations was expensive. And at the time, it wasn't viewed as an essential product as people had gas lighting. Turnpike roads were brought up to a good standard by virtue of the charges levied to use them.

It's only in the later phase when a thing gets so commonplace as to be seen as an essential part of life for the great majority that some form of communal model occurs. When that model is run or moderated by a national government they often go with a 'standard charge for all citizens' approach. Which means that those people who are cheaper to serve often subsidise those more expensive to serve.