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Comment by tweetle_beetle | Hacker News Reader

We're now in the position that just one company has a FTTP network. It's mad that Virgin Media has a monopoly on one cable that runs into my house, but all the other providers have to compete over the other cable that runs beside it (and I believe are unable to provide their own, even if they wanted to). I guess she got what she wanted.

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This is not true at all. The UK is seeing an explosion in non-BT FTTP networks - Hyperoptic, CommunityFibre, CityFibre, B4RN to name just a few off the top of my head. Granted, BT's network is probably currently the largest but that's because it's had a headstart and is a massive company - but they are certainly facing lots of competition at the local level which is great.

"unable to provide their own" seems to me like it's not universally true across the UK, at least -- CityFibre are digging up the roads just along from my house right now, installing new fibre all the way along the road, presumably in preparation for being able to provide fibre directly to each house...

That's not true at all, OpenReach[1] is putting fiber to the door in all kinds of small villages and other rural environments. There are many other providers. I think Virgin Media got the edge because of an acquisition of TelNet (or named something like that?) which laid a bunch of the groundwork infrastructure for fiber in the 90s, mainly in cities.

1. https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband

Telewest?

NTL, just googled it. They merged with Telewest at some point

I missed the edit window. Thanks for the corrections (orf, tebbers, pm215).

I meant to say that we're effectively in a localised monopoly to whatever provider has decided to invest in covering our area. Are there really buildings with cables from multiple competing providers which would allow a genuine choice? And as an individual consumer, it isn't possible to commission your own infrastructure.

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