Interesting video Richard. I can think of a few areas in Bolton which, over the last 12 months have had multiple altnets installing their services one after another, each with their own fibre kit which, with the existing Openrech FTTP, Virgin (cable not Nexfibre), and the altnets, have about 5 or 6 different lines in the ground now. Meanwhile, other areas are lucky to get one provider to install fibre. There'll come a time where it's simply no longer financially viable for these altnets to survive and continue their rollouts. My only hope for future (of full fibre) is that more of the altnets allow a wholesale access to all suppliers because the thought of being limited to one or two suppliers just based on geographical location seems a bit of a step back to me if we are to believe that competition is what keeps prices down.
The wholesale thing is a tricky one as it's a bit chicken and egg. To get to the scale where many ISPs are going to use a network it needs pretty dense and pretty wide coverage so the smaller ones aren't of value to most ISPs. A fair few altnets are wholesale but are just getting their offering to where it needs to be so hopefully more options will appear. None of them are going to get near the options available through Openreach sadly, this despite many of them offering superior products at lower costs.
Interesting video Richard. I can think of a few areas in Bolton which, over the last 12 months have had multiple altnets installing their services one after another, each with their own fibre kit which, with the existing Openrech FTTP, Virgin (cable not Nexfibre), and the altnets, have about 5 or 6 different lines in the ground now. Meanwhile, other areas are lucky to get one provider to install fibre. There'll come a time where it's simply no longer financially viable for these altnets to survive and continue their rollouts.
My only hope for future (of full fibre) is that more of the altnets allow a wholesale access to all suppliers because the thought of being limited to one or two suppliers just based on geographical location seems a bit of a step back to me if we are to believe that competition is what keeps prices down.
The wholesale thing is a tricky one as it's a bit chicken and egg. To get to the scale where many ISPs are going to use a network it needs pretty dense and pretty wide coverage so the smaller ones aren't of value to most ISPs.
A fair few altnets are wholesale but are just getting their offering to where it needs to be so hopefully more options will appear. None of them are going to get near the options available through Openreach sadly, this despite many of them offering superior products at lower costs.