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TalkTalk accuses BT of rebuilding its monopoly in fibre; BT insists there is a high level of competition.
TalkTalk on Tuesday insisted the U.K. lacks sufficient infrastructure competition, a claim vigorously contested by BT.
In a lively debate at a Westminster eForum event in London on Tuesday, TalkTalk public affairs manager Iain Wood said the country needs nationwide fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) access if it wants to compete on a global stage.
"Our continued dependence on copper is not healthy," he said. TalkTalk is currently trialling FTTP in York as part of a joint venture with Sky and CityFibre, and has proved that there is demand for such services, and that it is possible to roll out fibre at a reasonable cost, he added.
Wood said the current market structure is not fit for purpose, referring to the initial findings of Ofcom’s strategic review, which stopped short of recommending that BT’s networks business Openreach still has an incentive to make decisions in the interests of its parent rather than competitors, but stopped short of recommending a full separation of the two.
Wood argued that fully splitting Openreach from BT would create a company that responds to the demands of multiple customers and pushes ahead with a pure fibre rollout rather than serving BT which has a commercial imperative "to squeeze every last drop" out of its copper.
What’s more, with the lack of nationwide competition to BT’s fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) network, "years of hard work to inject competition in copper is being undone in fibre," he warned.
Unsurprisingly, BT disagrees. Its argument is that Openreach would not have been able to invest as much into its network as a standalone entity, and that a full separation would jeopardise future deployments.
Furthermore, "NGA (next-generation access) is very competitive," insisted Julian Ashworth, global director of group industry policy at BT.
He said Virgin Media’s hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) network currently has a 45% share of the U.K.’s retail NGA connections, compared to BT’s 38%.
"This is data. Anything else is an opinion, and not a very good one," Ashworth said.
Once Virgin completes its network expansion programme, Project Lightning, 60% of U.K. premises will be covered by at least two NGA networks, he argued. That rises to 70% of premises when smaller altnets like CityFibre are included, he claimed.
CityFibre recently revealed its aim to deploy FTTP in 100 cities and towns, covering 60% of businesses outside London.
The company suggested that its ambitious rollout plan could incentivise Openreach to up its game.
Incumbent fibre investments in Europe "are almost always made in response to a competitor," claimed James Enck, head of corporate development and investor relations at CityFibre.
Indeed, the latest example comes from Italy, where incumbent Telecom Italia is going head-to-head with Swisscom’s Fastweb and electricity firm Enel in the race to roll out FTTP.
"There hasn’t been that in the U.K.," Enck said. "We intend to play that role."
