Yeah, right
TalkTalk's head Dido Harding has previously said the company would like to roll-out FTTP to 10 million homes across the United Kingdom by 2025.
I think this actually means "TalkTalk's head Dido Harding has previously said the company would like someone else to roll-out FTTP to 10 million homes across the United Kingdom by 2025."
I really, really would like to know how Matt Hancock's ambition is going to be brought to fruition. Neither BT nor anyone else* can be told to provide a mass roll - out of fibre in the hope that customers are going to buy the service. Like it or not BT (and OR if it is separated) is a plc with a board that answers to the shareholders, who by and large are the big pension funds, insurance companies and so on. They would be up in arms if they had any reason to suspect that their returns might be impaired by an orgasm of capital investment that had been enforced with no certain return on a sensible timescale.
I cannot see a full fibre system being sold to users at the same price as (say) the current FTTC rates; it would make no economic sense whatsoever; it might never actually generate any meaningful return. What will happen? Will FTTC services be ceased so that users have to take FTTP at a greatly increased monthly cost or do without?
It's fine for businesses to want FTTP (or whatever name the minister likes) because it is not them that actually pays for it; as with all their other bills the money comes from their customers. Domestic users don't have customers and a full fibre system that was rolled out to "all" but was only used by business users would simply not pay for itself.
But then this is politician meets technology; the results are rarely if ever pretty.
* "Anyone else" in this context means any of the existing service providers; if HMG wants to set up its own company - not owned by shareholders - then all well and good... apart from the fact that it would then be us all as taxpayers that were funding the losses.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
