News
U.K. altnet accuses regulator of backtracking on promises to improve duct and pole access.
CityFibre on Thursday insisted that Ofcom has made "bad decisions" that reinforce BT’s position as a monopoly supplier of dark fibre.
The U.K. altnet on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the regulator’s plan to force BT’s Openreach arm to offer dark fibre access to rival operators with the High Court’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT).
As part of its Business Connectivity Market Review (BCMR) published in April, Ofcom concluded that it would impose dark fibre access at regulated prices on Openreach, but did not extend the same measures to duct access for serving large businesses. CityFibre believes that these measures will serve to disincentivise rivals from deploying their own fibre networks.
"Ofcom has made bad decisions that result in prioritising BT as a monopoly supplier of dark fibre," said Mark Williams, director of strategy and public affairs at CityFibre.
"This is done through barring CityFibre and others from using BT’s duct infrastructure for business connections and through heavy mandated price discounting of BT’s [dark fibre] infrastructure. Ofcom’s decisions are contrary to its duties to promote efficient infrastructure competition for the benefits of business and consumers," he said.
Indeed, the BCMR does appear to contradict the initial conclusions of the Digital Communications Review (DCR), in which Ofcom stated that Openreach must allow easier access for rivals to install their own fibre on BT’s ducts and poles.
Forcing Openreach to provide dark fibre access at regulated prices means rival telcos can provide high-speed connectivity to business customers without having to deploy their own fibre optic lines. While this saves time and money for retail operators, it incentivises a continued reliance on Openreach for fibre. Regulating dark fibre prices could also put rival dark fibre providers under pressure.
That said, it would be inaccurate to conclude that because Ofcom is imposing dark fibre access on Openreach at regulated prices, and not intervening in duct access, it is therefore opposed to the latter.
Duct and pole access, known as physical infrastructure access (PIA), is already available in the residential and small business markets, and BT has begun overhauling its processes to improve said access. Ofcom’s BCMR also leaves the door open to allowing PIA for the purposes of enabling altnets to serve larger business customers.
"Where CPs (communication providers) deploy to residential and small business consumers at scale, we will look to remove the current restriction which prevents use of duct and pole access for connecting larger businesses. We will consider this in our review of the wholesale local access market and in implementing the EU Civil Infrastructure Directive, which is expected to come into effect in the U.K. in the summer," said Ofcom, in the BCMR.
"We will also look to ensure that there are efficient operational processes for using duct and pole access, and require the establishment of an online database of the relevant infrastructure. We will continue to consider the potential role that duct and pole access could play in leased lines markets in light of these developments and will take them into account at our next review, assuming it is not necessary to intervene before then."
It is also worth remembering that CityFibre is a dark fibre provider, so it is in its interest to mitigate competitive threats, such as those posed by the U.K.’s incumbent telecoms operator launching a dark fibre product.
Ofcom meanwhile said it will defend its decision, which is "designed to ensure that consumers and businesses benefit from competition and investment in the market for high-speed lines."
