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Is there really demand for access to ducts ?

At work, we've been told that we are going to have to move to a new service as Vodamoan are shutting down the service we are on. It's part of what was originally Norweb Telecoms (then Yourcomms, then part of Thus, then borged into Clueless and Witless, and finally borged into Vodamoan). So they've got existing ducts and fibre which they are going to abandon in favour of just renting tails from BT.

OK, there's an element of getting rid of some legacy products with a small installed base - but it does suggest that they don't see much, if any, value in having their own fibre from their own pop.

And we deal with another site (a business park) where BT have already filled their ducts and so have had to start feeding in lines from the other side of the site to get to not-filled-yet ducts. So good luck renting any duct space there !

I've with the previous comments hinting that before long there'll be ducts full of unknown cables, carrying unknown services, for unknown companies (who may or may not still exist), to unknown customers. On aformentioned business park, they allow tenants to put (or rather, have put by the approved contractor) their own fibre between buildings. But they've kept no records and as they charge no deposit or rent there is no incentive for anyone to ever remove cable they no longer need. And yes, some of the ducts are now getting a bit full - and no-one wants to pay for the time it would take to work out what's in there and where it goes. An argument for including a metallic conductor in the cable for tone tracing purposes.