back to article Ofcom lifts sword, eyes up BT's duct and pole rental costs

In its on-going efforts to break Blighty's broadband dependence on BT, regulator Ofcom has today proposed a cap on Openreach's rental charges for smaller providers accessing its ducts and poles. The regulator said the changes will result "in material reductions" for the majority of rental charges. Ofcom's proposals follow its …

  1. Lee D Silver badge

    Oh how relevant.

    Ethernet line install with Virgin ordered in Februrary.

    They had to use BTOpenreach ducts because that's all that's in the village already and it would cost the earth to dig up and lay a new line.

    But the duct has been "silted" / "blocked" etc. ever since then (until today, when I escalated my fuss-level to "I have a point-to-point microwave engineer standing on-site, who can beat your price and speed, don't force me to make a snap decision"). Six months. And as of last week they were still saying a 6 week waiting periods to hire the hardware to clear it (strangely that went out the window when I made my fuss and it's now "being cleared today", apparently).

    I could have got on my hands and knees with a stick and a bottle of Fairy Liquid and cleared it quicker than they could, and with zero chance of damaging the other stuff in there (unlike the huge machinary they want to hire). I wouldn't mind but it is literally the final stretch of the cable run, and BTO's involvement have turned it into a farce of epic proportions AGAIN. That's why when I specified the order, I explicitly asked for BTO involvement to be non-existent or minimal at worst.

    1. wolfetone Silver badge

      "I have a point-to-point microwave engineer standing on-site, who can beat your price and speed, don't force me to make a snap decision""

      Why not just go with him then if you've been enduring 6 months of total failure?

      1. Lee D Silver badge

        I'd rather not have my site-to-site connection drop because of a bit of fog or rain, if at all possible, it's a not-insignificant distance to cross, over the tops of residential houses and trees.

        Ethernet lines give guaranteed SLA.

        However, it motivated BTO to move and I now know that I have a backup plan I can use, if I'm prepared to sacrifice some of the SLA for the lower-cost solution.

        I guess they thought that the otherwise-lost months of leased-line costs was worth it, even if they have to put the cable in early, compared to me finding out how much better "no monthly rental, and can sit in tandem with the Ethernet line so I can delay THEM another 6 months and hence they lose half-a-year of rentals anyway" is.

      2. Roland6 Silver badge

        >Why not just go with him then if you've been enduring 6 months of total failure?

        In fact having endured 6 months of total failure before you get the 'high-speed' circuit, I would go ahead with the line-of-sight connection as a backup/alternative route. One thing I learnt is that businesses become more dependent upon having communications, so a 6 day outage in 1~2 years time will be a much bigger deal than the 6 months plus outage you are currently experiencing.

        Also having an alternative line in from day one, helps to keep you involved in future procurement and maintenance of their network infrastructure which can lead to other work...

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          "Also having an alternative line in from day one, helps to keep you involved in future procurement and maintenance of their network infrastructure which can lead to other work..."

          Not to mention that having an alternative supplier in the premises gives an _instant_ discount in BTO's asking prices.

  2. Bloodbeastterror

    When are OFCOM doing to do something actually useful and divorce landline telephones from broadband? It's scandalous that I am forced to pay through the nose for a telephone service that I don't use (though Microsoft Support and double-glazing sellers certainly do).

    1. Anonymous Coward Silver badge
      Paris Hilton

      Does any provider actually charge for providing the telephone service? I just see 'line rental' (and sometimes 'free' calls).

      Most people still need a physical line to run broadband over, unfortunately.

      Now if they could regulate the charges for the line to something more reasonable, that would be much better. Unfortunately it's the providers who keep hiking it - the wholesale price hasn't increased in years!

      1. anothercynic Silver badge

        I think...

        ... What the original OP refers to is the 'you must have phone service from us', as opposed to 'rent the bare wires' like people like A&A allow you to do. You don't *need* phone service to have *broadband* service. :-)

        And yes, as you so aptly point out, it's the providers who hike the cost of the "line rental" to offset the "free calls" (quotes intentional) you get (which were utterly useless to me). At least with my new provider I am literally paying for the wires only and the BB service over them. I don't have phone service (despite still having my phone number assigned to the wires).

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Vodaphone do this and surprise surprise, it's pretty much the same cost.

      Do you think they will let you keep the line & service for free?

      BTW it's already in the pipeline.

    3. BenDwire Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Broadband Only Lines

      Some ISPs allow you to have a broadband only line. I pay £10 per month to Andrews & Arnold for that, and obviously don't have to suffer any land-line calls. (I think the actual lines have been assigned to Talk Talk, but thankfully I don't have to get involved with them).

      1. Lee D Silver badge

        Re: Broadband Only Lines

        A&A's usage limits are ridiculously low, however.

        1. My Alter Ego

          Re: Broadband Only Lines

          "A&A's usage limits are ridiculously low, however."

          Yup - they're quite expensive if you want a decent allowance, but personally I think they're worth the extra cost.

        2. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

          @Lee D - Re: Broadband Only Lines

          A&A's usage limits are ridiculously low, however.

          Sure, they don't offer all you can eat broadband at a ridiculously low price.

          But their customer service is fantastic.

          1. jimbo36

            Re: @Lee D - Broadband Only Lines

            This raises an interesting point, surely if there has been an issue which meant you had to contact customer services in the first place, that's a problem whether they were good to deal with or not?

            By comparison, I never once had to contact Sky during my 4 or so years with them, and I've not (yet) had to contact PlusNet in the 2 years since I switched. The fact I've not had to have any contact with them because nothing has gone wrong should trump good customer service?

            There may not be a correct answer to this, by the way, it was just an alternate way of looking at it.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: @Lee D - Broadband Only Lines

              Agreed, I'm currently with Plusnet (hey I effectively paid £50 for the entire year, after 18 months with BT, where I also ended up paying about £100).

              Never had to call BT and Plusnet I had to call once; got answered in about 5 minutes, engineer out 3 days later (as I called on a Friday evening). Fixed there and then. It was simply down to a BT engineer accidentally disconnecting my cable in the cab.

              The only customer "service" I ever had run in's with were Orange who eventually found themselves with a claim going through the small claim court. I could also mention Telewest, but that is really showing my age..

              As above, if you have to deal with customer services on a regular basis, then maybe you need a better provider.

              1. BenDwire Silver badge
                Stop

                Re: @Lee D - Broadband Only Lines

                As above, if you have to deal with customer services on a regular basis, then maybe you need a better provider.

                No, absolutely not. In my case it was the exact opposite experience.

                A few years ago, when I lived in a house in the middle of nowhere, the broadband went all intermittent and after countless calls to BT culminating in something like 15 engineering visits by BTO people over a period of 6 months I still had a rubbish service. Then someone put me onto A&A who specifically invited people with line problems to sign up. Within a few weeks, wires routed underneath ploughed fields were replaced and perfect service was resumed. OK, so I had to set up a syslog server for my router and email a chap in Bracknell the error logs, but compared to the ‘service’ BT were offering it was amazing.

                Now that I’ve moved, I’ve chosen to stay with A&A because of loyalty. More expensive, yes*, but the memories of those dark intermittent times will haunt me forever. Never again.

                * I still don’t think that £35 per month including line rental for ADSL with a 150GB cap is that bad? I like M&S pork pies too ...

        3. anothercynic Silver badge

          Re: Broadband Only Lines

          @Lee D, their usage limit might be 'ridiculously low' (for normal usage it's fine, it's when you start streaming HD, UHD and 4K video that it chews through your allowance), but if you choose to pay the extra tenner you can be virtually uncapped.

          And A&A's customer service is top notch (on the par that Eclipse used to be at before Kingston Comms, oh, sorry, KCom, decided to give the middle finger to their home customers and make them effectively business-only). A&A also refuses to filter their traffic, block websites, or do anything that negatively affects their customers. So for someone who believes in unfiltered Intarwebs, I'll happily to go them for service!

      2. jimbo36

        Re: Broadband Only Lines

        Trouble is, A&A charge quite a bit more than your average ISP - so even though you're only paying £10 for your copper pair, the total bill is still £45 a month on the cheapest tariff (Home 1).

        I pay £15 less for unlimited downloads and it even includes a phone service, whether I want one or not.

  3. Roland6 Silver badge

    "In its on-going efforts to break Blighty's broadband dependence on BT..."

    Can't see how capping Openreach charges is going to break ISP's dependence on BT & Openreach. If anything they will serve to increase ISP's dependence on BT & Openreach by making it less financially viable for competitors...

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: "In its on-going efforts to break Blighty's broadband dependence on BT..."

      Unless and until Openreach's plant is cleaved from BT, the situation will continue.

      There's a very good reason that New Zealand's regulators refused to let Telecom NZ simply split off the lines company functions whilst retaining ownership of the plant, which is what BT have done - and the result was turning a poster child for "How NOT to privatise your telco" into one of the most competitive markets in the world - in a period of less than 5 years.

      1. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: "In its on-going efforts to break Blighty's broadband dependence on BT..."

        >Unless and until Openreach's plant is cleaved from BT, the situation will continue.

        It will make no real difference, Blightly will still be dependent upon a monopoly comm's infrastructure provider...

        What Ofcom should be doing is more to encourage third-party(s) to lay ducts and speculatively fill them with unlit fibre. This objective can be assisted by changing the way non-BT ducts, poles and cable (copper and fibre) are assessed for business rate purposes. Obviously this would mean Ofcom getting hard-nosed (wrt to it's remit) with the government and Treasury; something I don't see them having the guts to do...

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "In its on-going efforts to break Blighty's broadband dependence on BT..."

        "Unless and until Openreach's plant is cleaved from BT, the situation will continue."

        be careful of the way it can happen, you can end up with the utter cluster fuck that is the US model, where you can have dozens of companies saying it's not their problem.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ducts are all

    Unless you are going to go with some form of wireless connection (that come with their own problems) between the customer and the internet then you are going to need to pass cables through other people's property.

    Unsuprisingly people do not want you digging up their garden or collapsing their cellars as happened with the cable companies and so putting in new ducts has been always expensive and unpopular.

    BT when it was removed from it's owners use (privatised) included the miles and decades worth of infrastructure and access rights. This required any potential competitor to spend millions on purchasing the rights before they could lay the cables and all this before they could recover a penny from any potential customers. Then add in the inevitable insurance claims associated with damage to land owners property and you can see why the cable companies network is tiny when compaired with what was given away to the BT shareholders.

    After fourty years of effective monopoly for BT and we find that not only have they not maintained the infrastructure, even thought they have recieved what must be billions in additional state funding, but are still dirty fighting to retain their strangle hold upon the UK population's communications.

    Given that BT have had more handouts than any of their competitors then a cap is a joke, BT should be fined each time they fail to allow their competitors reasonable access to the ducts or allow ducts to become unavailible, the fines should not go to their competitors but back to the state so we can all recover a little of what has been stolen from us.

    The price of a new length of cable running down an existing duct is virtually nothing when compared with the cost of running a new duct and cable beside the existing one. If BT are unwilling to maintain the infrastructure then it should return to state control with BT paying to return it to the state they got it in.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Ducts are all

      "If BT are unwilling to maintain the infrastructure then it should return to state control with BT paying to return it to the state they got it in."

      You mean rip out all the new fibre? They may not have properly maintained some, or even much, of the old network, but they have rolled out an awful lot of new fibre and kit over the years. And don't forget, BT wasn't spun off as a freebie. Shares were sold for £billions and those shareholders bought the network and infrastructure. (whether you account for the "free" shares or are of the opinion the shares were undervalued is another discussion)

      1. Richard 12 Silver badge

        Re: Ducts are all

        I think the OP means the ducts.

        If BT don't want to maintain their ducts, then the ducts go back to the taxpayer and BT can rent access at market rate for the fibre etc they have pulled.

        BT have historically set that market rate, so clearly they think the pre-cap rate is reasonable, and their competitors can pay the capped one.

        1. Steven Jones

          Re: Ducts are all

          BT shareholders own those assets.If the government want them, then they'd have to buy them back. Anything else would be state confiscation of private assets and would be unacceptable to the vast majority of MPs, not to mention Human Rights legislation (the ECHR recognises the rights of private assets).

          In any event, when the state did own the network, then they too did not regularly clear ducts. Unless they are constantly subject to change, it's a vast waste of resources as, in most cases, cables & fibre remain untouched for decades - so a duct might have to be cleared several times and access was never required. It's more cost effective to do it on demand in most cases.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Ducts are all

            "BT shareholders own those assets.....", I along with every other UK citizen was a BT shareholder before "privisation", to me our property was stolen for the benefit of the few and so trumps any civil rights that shareholds might claim. Just as it was with the TSB, who were nothing to do with the same government that sold them off too. The law is clear in that recievers of stolen goods have no rights of ownership

            Whenever there is a call for the return of "privatised" assets you see those same people who were complicit in the removal of everyone else's property complaining how their rights count where everyone else do not.

            The very same people who are profitting when the same "privatised" companies repeatedly dip into our pockets over and again. If there was any justice in the UK then it would be reasonable to suggest they have had more than a fair return on their "investment" i.e. they have already had more than they bought the shares for returned.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Ducts are all

        >Shares were sold for £billions and those shareholders bought the network and infrastructure

        The taxpayer was swindled, the property and land-bank value of BT was probably worth more alone than the float price. Oh and the poor old taxpayer is still saddled with their pension liabilities.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Ducts are all

          "Oh and the poor old taxpayer is still saddled with their pension liabilities."

          No, it's BT Group and their shareholders, not the taxpayer, who have the pension problem. It must be a major headache as none of the others Telcos/ISPs have that millstone round their neck.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Ducts are all

            >No, it's BT Group and their shareholders, not the taxpayer, who have the pension problem.

            Read on Macduff

            https://www.btpensions.net/information/crown-guarantee

            1. Steven Jones

              Re: Ducts are all

              Super dumb. The Crown guarantee only comes into effect if, and only if, BT group becomes insolvent. By then the shareholders will have had their entire investment wiped out. The Crown Guarantee is entirely worthless to the shareholders - they still carry the liability up to the entire value of their shares.

              The Government hope, of course, that they will not have to pick up the BT pension deficit, much of it down to a scheme set up by the state when there wee 260,000 employees. It's notable that the government did have to pick up the deficit for the parallel Royal Mail scheme (around £8n from memory - no doubt more now) before any investor would even touch it.

              So if you count shareholders not being responsible for the debt because if the company was wiped out servicing it, then by all means continue to do so. In the meantime, real shareholders will continue to act as if it is their investment which is at risk because that is the case and the market will price shares with that in mind.

              nb. It is also the pension fund trustees who, in the final analysis, would have stopped Ofcom forcing a BT/OR split as it was obvious (and recognised) that OR cash flow was required to service the deficit. If that had been on the cards, the trustees would have been in court immediately to secure the deficit funding and the whole exercise would have hit the buffers.

              There is even talk that the pension scheme could be given the network as collatoral for the pension deficit.

        2. Roland6 Silver badge

          Re: Ducts are all

          Re: "The taxpayer was swindled, the property and land-bank value of BT was probably worth more alone than the float price. Oh and the poor old taxpayer is still saddled with their pension liabilities."

          I agree the monies received by the Treasury (on the taxpayer's behalf) was significantly less than the asset price - this was also the case with all the other privatisations, with the discrepancy being publicly reported with the Post Office privatisation. But then this also happens in the private sector where companies are sold at a discount with the intention that whomsoever buy's the business takes it on as a going concern along with all its liabilities...

        3. Steven Jones

          Re: Ducts are all

          The taxpayer was not swindled. Corrected for inflation, the amount paid to the government over the three tranches is pretty well what the market value is now. The Government also managed to dump the responsibility for slimming the workforce down from 260K to the roughly 80K UK employees now, not to mention the pension deficit for that original government designed scheme.

          The network at the time of nationalisation was dominated by ancient Strowger exchanges with only a very few (very, very expensive) electronic exchanges and very little fibre indeed. The network (physical infrastructure and final copper loops apart) is pretty well unrecognisable.

          In all, something of a bargain for the government. A lot of money in the coffers for something they mismanaged and failed to invest in for decades.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Ducts are all

            > Steven Jones

            Disclaimer: I don't work (and have never worked) for BT

            Can you say the same ?

            A little bit too defensive of BT for my sense of impartiality.

  5. tedleaf

    Notice how there has NEVER been any pressure or idea from gov/Ofcom etc to force firms who piggy back on bt to use any of their own money to build out their own networks ?

    Strange isn't it that we are meant to live in the 22nd century sci-fi world but that almost every single provider still only uses one ex-public owned network..

    A tone piggy backing of bt should be forced by law to put aside a fixed amount 10/20% of TURN OVER,not profit to build their own network,they could all join together and pool the cash to get their network quicker,but of course that would mean Ofcom actually having to do some work but would get us,the bill payers some competition,the gobs favourite bullshit way of supposedly driving down prices and the nation would have more than one old,vulnerable system..

    It will never happen though,too much bribery at work..

  6. JaitcH
    WTF?

    DUCTS? Who the hell uses ducts?

    Many moons ago I lived on Burtons Lane in Little Chalfont, Buckinghamshire when the GPO put underground vitreous china ducts in the ground, each having four separate 'pipes'.

    I well remember well when the GPO inspector came to check and pass the work, he threaded a thin rope, sequentially, down each pipe. To the rope was attached a wooden dowel, about 12" long, which had to be able to pass from one end of the duct to the other without obstruction.

    Just over five years ago, when visiting Toronto, Telus - a Western Canada telco - was wiring the city up with fibre for InterNet.

    They simply sliced the concrete - usually the centre of the road - and ran a plough down it which dragged in the large diameter cables. Every mile, or so, they would deviate to the edge of a road and leave a loop of 20 or 30 metres exposed above ground and continue their ploughing.

    Later, usually the next day, a truck would appear and a large concrete chamber would be buried in the ground and the exposed cables fed into it.

    Today, in VietNam, they have small ploughs, much the size of an ATCO lawn mower, which perform the same operation under sidewalks for small diameter cables suitable for a few houses or an office building.

    When I built my office / home out in the wilds, I did use plastic pipes for the fibre lines but only because I have a substantially thick concrete driveway. And because I have a dislike for above ground cables spoiling the view.

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