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back to article Openreach to comms providers: Why can't we be friends?

The new, reformed UK network backbone Openreach wants to "get much closer" to its communications providers and hopes to make a business case for a "very sizeable" full-fibre footprint together, says chief exec Clive Selley. Speaking at the Total Telecoms Connected Britain event in London, Selley was eager to come across as …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The problem, Clive...

    ...is that nobody believes you.

    Openreach has lacked any transparency whatsoever, its costs and revenues, and balance sheet have been wilfully opaque since forever. Now that Ofcom have done a teensy bit to disperse some of the smokescreen, claiming to want to work together with everybody seems a bit disingenuous.

    Having said that, I DO believe you. You know that stronger regulation is coming, if slowly, and that means that Openreach's value is enhanced by the largest possible regulated asset base, and the biggest possible investment programme. Widespread FTTP is a lovely way of bulking up the RAB.

    But you'll find that your new "industry partners" have little enthusiasm for that. In particular, VerminMedia will be most unhappy about an FTTP roll out in their cable areas. Sky might be more supportive if they can be convinced that there's some Chinese Walls within BT (though on blance I wouldn't trust BT in that respect).

    Who will be your friend?

    4 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The problem, Clive...

      "VerminMedia will be most unhappy about an FTTP roll out in their cable areas"

      I thought OpenScreech were already targetting VM areas anyway

      You know, under the BT "if there's viable competition we'll fight, if not, tough it out with long-line copper barelybroad-band you suckers" policy ?

      1 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The problem, Clive...

        "I thought OpenScreech were already targetting VM areas anyway"

        I'd agree there's some anecdotal evidence, but it would also suggest a degree of commercial competence that I'm reluctant to ascribe to BT/OR. Do you think they are that organised?

        I suspect that there is targeting that it is coincidentally correlated with VM's footprint, but that arises because any telecoms build out uses a similar logic for building a business case, based on the size of a town, population density, accessibility of the individual property, and backhaul connections.

        1 0 Reply
        1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: The problem, Clive...

          "accessibility of the individual property"

          OR already have easy access to almost every property in the UK and far easier access to new builds than anyone else. Builders often will only allow BT into the new estates at build time and no one else can get in for a year or two until the land/road/footpath access is handed over to the local council. I'm sure VM and others would love to put fibre down in the new-build ducts alongside BT.

          1 0 Reply
  2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    And will BT still remain your biggest CP?

    All partners are equal, but some are more equal than others, eh?

    2 1 Reply
  3. James O'Shea

    keep your friends close

    and your enemies closer. -- M Corleone.

    Methinks Clive-boy has been watching The Godfather I & II. (Note: there was never a third Godfather and never will be. Capish?)

    3 0 Reply
    1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: keep your friends close

      and your enemies closer. -- M Corleone.

      "It's better to be loved by your people. However, if they don't love you, you can still rule by fear"

      (Niccolò Machiavelli - paraphrase thereof)

      0 0 Reply
  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No more money for Copper. Pointless G.fast shouldn't ever be publicly funded.

    No more money for Copper. Pointless G.fast shouldn't ever be publicly funded.

    Clive Selley is a BT Company man through and through (he's been parachuted into the Openreach role for the sole purpose of managing BT's interest in Openreach, in the interests of BT). You can have any separate corporate structure you want but it comes down to indivduals, I believe he was put there for that purpose, above other individuals.

    This sounds very much like "Put up, or shut up", so shut up and accept bamboozled, obfuscated "up to" copper carcass Pointless G.fast technology.

    G.fast has been used as a distraction/delaying tactic by/for BT with the regulator Ofcom. Improved complex Cooper technology to solve all our Nation's "up to" Broadband issues was always just over the horizon, and Ofcom fell for the patter every time.

    We need a proper future plan that gives the UK blanket, even coverage for all, not "up to" and fundamentally we don't have one. The Internet has proved its worth, now it's time to make the network robust for everyone, and that means full pure fibre.

    The public need to understand that pointless G.fast will never offer "up to" ultrafast broadband in the real world on anything but a perfect copper pair, over distances of less than (I'm being generous here) 500m (250m as the crow flies from the cabinet). 500m is the ballpark cut-off, beyond which G.fast helps no-one.

    Large add-on G.fast pods/cabinet extensions currently take a maximum of 48 ports. In the market town I live we have 5 FTTC cabinets, but the exchange has 1500 lines. The practical limitations are there to see, 190 Connections max, for 1500 lines (assuming no change to the existing network infrastructure). There will be have's and have not's, and that's without taking into account the 500m cut-off.

    The G.fast trials to date have used completely separate wiring/circuits to keep the cross-talk interference to a minimum. When done in real world conditions (especially in industrial zones), the same speeds just won't be practically possible over much of the network.

    Whatever layout/topology you go for, i.e. Pole deployment v Cab deployment for G.fast, it just doesn't stack up as a "cheap","reliable" - long term technology.

    You either need far too many nodes, per Sqm, or you need much improved cabling, expensive smoothed power supplies and the existing ADSL/ADSL-LLU migrated off the local loop. It can't be used for EO lines. Mismatches in firmware/incompatible equipment and rogue devices on the network, just compound issues, over time.

    National G.fast deployment is a can of worms waiting to happen. Fault finding will become a nightmare.

    As customers we're been sold snake oil, by BT. BT needs to completely re-think its strategy.

    It needs to get rural communities on-board for a start otherwise I can see someone pushing for a funding model that extends B4RN's approach Nationally, as regards rural communities. Because that approach is working.

    Community Cabinets alongside BT Cabinets, that can be isolated from the network if need be, like the BT Socket, is probably the logically approach. Customer then pay private contractors to connect fibres within the mini local loop, allowing households to club together to get streets connected at time.

    There are ways to do full fibre for everyone, but BT need to drop their bamboozled obfuscated pointless "up to" G.fast plans. NOW.

    5 0 Reply
    1. Roland6 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: No more money for Copper. Pointless G.fast shouldn't ever be publicly funded.

      Community Cabinets alongside BT Cabinets

      Sub-loop unbundling has been around for a long-time, I looked at it's viability in my area in circa 2009, but the final form of BDUK changed the market making 'community' (ie. parish-based) initatives uneconomic.

      The challenge is that there is rather a lot of pure copper (or aluminium) cabinet-to--the-premise/home out there, (remember BT have only been providing cable with fibre and copper cores for new developments for a little over a decade) so improving on copper, requires digging up roads/pavements - which is what Gigaclear et al have to do.

      However, in saying the above, I seem to remember that BT had finally got the agreement of Ofcom to allow them to drop the roll out of new copper...

      1 0 Reply
  5. Roland6 Silver badge

    Competing with BT Wholesale?

    "He said fundamentally Openreach is a wholesaler "and when we go to market, it is through our retail partners"

    I think (if I correctly understand the caveated words of colleagues) Openreach is more of a broker than a wholesaler.

    BT on Openreach: "We’re responsible for providing services over the local access network" ie. Openreach don't own the local access network. [http://www.btplc.com/Thegroup/Ourcompany/Groupbusinesses/Openreach/index.htm ]

    Openreach: "Who we are: We look after the fibres, wires and cables that connect the country."

    [https://www.homeandwork.openreach.co.uk/WhoWeAre.aspx ]

    NB. This differs from Wikipedia:

    "Openreach is a subsidiary of telecommunications company BT Group that owns the pipes and telephone cables that connect nearly all businesses and homes in the United Kingdom to the national broadband and telephone network."

    [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openreach ]

    1 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Competing with BT Wholesale?

      Well yes, they are to an extent going to compete - just not too hard.

      You're correct that the comedy "separation" is just for asset management and operations, and BT group keep ownership of the assets. That means they can continue to load up on cheap network secured debt as they over-pay for sporting and media rights, and there's no risk of a complete asset divestment if they had to sell Openreach. Without Openreach's assets on its balance sheet, BT Group would be uninvestable for most equity investors. And with the OR assets mixed into all the other toxic sludge on BT's balance sheet there's plenty of opportunity for sleight of hand. The BT Group pension fund is also something that they want to keep hold of the OR assets for - low interest rates and rising life expectancy mean the deficit is probably rising, and it was £7bn back in 2014. Because the government have agreed to underwrite the BT group pension scheme in the event of insolvency, they pressured Ofcom to accept this tawdry deal.

      Investors have been gifted over-large dividends for years, when more money should have gone into the pension fund, and at the same time the terms of the fund should have been changed to increase employee contributions for defined benefits. Instead, the investors get off the hook, the pensioners get given generous pensions funded by transferring a big chunk of the OR assets. Incidentally, this means that OR might want to have a more modern and higher value network, BT Group will remain averse to cash consumption by OR, so if they aren't given the money by government, or forced by Ofcom (ha!) then all this talk of fibre networks is rubbish. The build out of fibre will remain opportunist in the worst sense of the word, plus (possibly) when they do asset renewal of the local loop. According to BT Group Accounting Policies, cable is depreciated over lives between three and twenty five years, so if they'd had their act together and been replacing cable at the end of its accounting life, they'd have made significant progress. The reality is of course that they don't proactively replace cable, they just leave it for as long as possible, and then only do something if the complaints become embarassing.

      2 0 Reply
    2. itzman
      Reply Icon

      Re: Competing with BT Wholesale?

      you have that backwards AIUI. openretch look after the infrastructure and own it, wholesales sells it on

      0 0 Reply
  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Technology Neutral" spineless Ofcom, you need to take heed from events of Grenfell Tower.

    I have constant issue with Ofcom's approach to Regulation, especially since they stated Ofcom's approach is "Technology Neutral", because it's such a spineless cop-out and really just an means of acceptance of BT's use of Pointless G.fast over pure fibre, for rollout of next gen networks.

    In a way it's similar to the way regulation has worked regards Grenfell Tower, everyone involved decided to ignore the subtle technical detail, to concentrate on Price/Cost, visual appearance "Well it looks and appears the same to the customer".

    There are real reliability issues in choosing G.fast over full fibre rollout, in which inevitably, lives will depend.

    What Ofcom are doing is the equivalent of saying we don't care about the fire retardent properties of the Cladding, that's not important, as far as we are concerned, how it appears to the customer is what is important, not the technical details of the technology used to reach the customer.

    Ofcom, as said - you need to change your approach, the technology used matters in terms of regulation, G.fast is not a reliable technology, and as stated lives could depend on this.

    Ofcom saying they are Technology Neutral is just plain wrong, regards a Telecoms Regulator. The underlying technology is very important to the overall quality, robustness of the network. Leaving that decision to private companies alone, you end up with events like Grenfell Tower, when single point of failure issues arise.

    1 0 Reply

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