Re: Local loop unbundling would of course mean the equivalnet of Openreach being formed.
Of course your connectivity options are going to be worse in a sparsely populated area, just like your options for everything else.
You claimed that 'last mile' was a natural monopoly, without any additional information except mentioning provision of service to a 'housing estate', which to me at the very least implies that it's not a single farm in the boondocks.
You also claimed that noone would line up to provide multiple competing options for a housing estate, or atleast that having multiple last mile providers wouldn't be practical in the majority of cases.
Atleast here, and in other countries where most of the population live in/near cities, this certainly isn't the case.
There are even some very poor countries where you'd be surprised to find several providers line up to hook up your building even when only a small part of the population can afford any sort of permanent internet access. The situation as to whether it makes fiscal sense to build a competing network certainly isn't worse in a country where most/all of the population can afford it.
Last mile service isn't any more of a "natural monopoly" than cellphone/mobile broadband service. In fact even less so, since there's considerably more room for competing providers in the ground/on poles than in the radio spectrum.
Fun fact: In the early days (early 20th century) of landline phone service, there were actually several different competing private networks here. It wasn't until years later that the government decided to form a legal monopoly to take over the networks built by private companies and forbid anyone from building a new one. So even back then last mile service wasn't a natural monopoly.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
