@AndrueC
This is the problem with a universal service in the modern age.
It used to be that all the easy customers would be charged a little bit more for their services, and the surplus would be used to provide a service for those people who needed a more expensive solution, without them having to pay more.
But now we must have 'value for money' and 'maximize shareholder return', and suddenly, you're not allowed to put in a non-profit making solution.
The only ways that this can be overcome is by re-nationalizing Openreach or BT as a whole and giving it's near-monopoly back (shudder), or putting regulations in place that enforce a guaranteed minimum service for all customers.
But that last solution is unpopular with suppliers, because it limits maximum profit, plus someone in the future will come in and provide just the easy customers a cost+small profit service, undercutting Openreach on the services they need to cross-subsidise the more expensive customers.
It's the tension that exists everywhere in regulated capitalist systems, unfortunately.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
