@ SImon Hobson
I was with you up to the point where you started appologising for the gouging of the telecom monoply, outside of cities there is zero choice and the price to the customer is the maximium they can get and still profit from BTinternet as well as openreach.
We agree that in terms of efficency that doubling up on cabling is counter productive however unless the infrastructure paid for by the state is returned to the state then how else can you get around the monopoly that BT hold in the UK. The cable companies didn't pay the massive cost required to run their own systems for fun it was because it was cheaper then paying BT to carry the content for them. My second point on doubling up is that efficency is not the only consideration, redundancy can also provide for fail resistance were it not the case that BT control the connections between the cable company areas and out to the wide web.
Thus BT are able to tax everyone who needs internet access and whilst that continues then their can be no competition nor push towards reducing customer costs since every provider is paying BT at some point and their prices have traditionally been whatever they liked.
The only way out of this situation is for Openreach and all its infrastructure to be completely removed from BT and returned to the people who paid for it, anything else is merely cosmetic as it does nothing to remove their monopoly on UK communicatons
Biting the hand that feeds IT
