Reply to post: Re: New Zealand has done it.

Re: New Zealand has done it.

" New Zealand has done it.

Surely this NZ model can be applied."

That only worked in New Zealand because the government also gave the new last mile provider a £1000 'gift' for every house in the country. I expect Openreach could make a fair crack at faster broadband if they were given £26.5Bn. (£1000 x number of UK households).

Your example also ignores Virgin. They reach most UK homes. Turning Openreach into a public body with access to cheap government borrowing puts them out of business. If the government does propose a split the legal battle that follows will be led by Virgin I think (or their US parent) as they stand to lose most.

From cable.co.uk;

Virgin Media CEO Tom Mockridge, in his keynote at Broadband World Forum, said many of the submissions made to Ofcom calling for Openreach to be divested have amounted to “an attack on BT”.

“That’s not something we agree with as an infrastructure investor,” he told the conference, which took place at ExCel London last week.

Mr Mockridge said the government taking control of the Openreach network would be “frankly not a good message” to send to companies such as Virgin’s owner Liberty Global, which is investing billions in the UK.

“BT was privatised 30 years ago with that network and the choices were there to be made then. But if the government has already made the decision to privatise it, to come back at it a second time, we would say that’s not reasonable."

He said it would be better to set economic policy regulation to create a "competing network", instead of relying on "a single network which is regulated, or maybe over regulated, in order to get the outcomes you desire".