Unbundling the future of broadband

The recent UK comprehensive spending review demonstrated the importance the government attaches to fast Internet access for economic growth, especially in rural areas. Even as Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne was cutting department budgets left and right, he still found £530m to bring next-generation access (NGA) to parts of North Yorkshire, Cumbria, Herefordshire and the Highlands and Islands. These areas need the subsidy because it is otherwise uneconomic for operators to bring them high-speed Internet access. In urban areas, it is going to be easier: you may already have seen the kerbside cabinets that Openreach (the access division of BT) is installing to enable its Infinity service, or you may have been offered a 50Mbit/s connection by Virgin. But the issue of enabling service competition still has to be addressed: no one wants to see the introduction of NGA leading to new monopolies. The solution relies on a combination of technical, business and regulatory factors. The problem is that enabling NGA competition is not as straightforward as it was for current broadband services.