Ofcom’s Annual
Report was published yesterday and, guess what?, the regulator gives itself
a largely glowing end-of-term assessment.
To be fair, the Report does at least dissect Ofcom’s individual goals,
and attempts to monitor progress on each, but some of the progress statements
take a rather blinkered view of regulatory achievement. For example, as regards broadband, Ofcom
identifies one of its aims as “to create an environment that
gives confidence to potential investors, enabling them to make a case to roll
out new superfast networks”. Here’s the first action review:
“After we required BT to offer access to its
network of underground ducts and telegraph poles to allow companies to offer
superfast broadband services, BT published prices for these in October 2011.
These prices are among the lowest, if not the lowest, for comparable products
elsewhere in Europe….In areas where BT has no commercial plans to invest,
access to these ducts and poles will allow other providers to bid for the
funding which will be made available by Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK)…”
Sounds plausible enough but, in the real world, things
look a little less rosy. We heard just
this week that Fujitsu, BT’s only qualified rival under the BDUK tendering
framework, has withdrawn from two further broadband contests. Indeed, there’s a
growing consensus that BDUK’s whole approach to subsidy allocation unreasonably
favours the incumbent. As to
competitive access to BT’s passive infrastructure, there is countless anecdotal
evidence from competitive providers that the PIA product is simply not fit for
purpose. No wonder, then, that BT
itself acknowledges a lack of interest: in evidence
to the House of Lords
Select Committee on superfast broadband, Sean Williams, BT’s Group
Strategy Director, admitted that “there is no demand for PIA”.
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