The redundant telco?

A couple of months back, I relayed the story of a 'perfect storm' in Birmingham, where BT and Virgin were attempting to block the Council’s attempt to develop, independently,  a new superfast broadband network in and around the jewellery quarter of the city – the development funded by the government’s ‘Super-connected Cities’ project.  I’ve heard no more about that impasse but it occurred to me that, as the penetration of fibre networks grows, and broadband speeds head from famine to feast, our ISPs will increasingly lose what may be their major source of differentiation.  This certainly appears to have been the case in the US where a number of university towns, including Chicago and Seattle, are partnering with a venture capital operation called Gigabit Squared in raising the money to construct new ‘ultrafast’ networks (comprising FTTH and wireless solutions).  Following the deployment of its fibre network in Kansas City, Google is similarly looking to work with municipal partners in other areas.  

This new, non-ISP model appears to have been generally well received by users.  As one commentator put it: “our problem with broadband is not with technology - it is because the networks are too often accountable to entities outside the community - Wall Street most notably”.  And the views of the ISPs themselves?  Well, short of the sort of legal intervention attempted here by BT and Virgin, it is not at all clear how they can - or should – respond…