Following the announcement of the Greek government to sponsor and support a very ambitious deployment of a Fiber Access Network in the 52 biggest cities of the country Italian government came forward with a similar initiative: The intention to finance 10% of a 10bn investment required to expand a NGAN to the entire Italian peninsula! The announcement does not specifically mention fiber, so shall we suspect that the project might include a mixture of fiber and wireless access?
In the mean time Fransesco Caio’s report indicates that UK Government should not fund fiber broadband [TheRegister.co.uk], [FT.com]. Fibre to the home UK – Fibrevolution made also a short review on the report. Another report, this one coming from BSG (Broadband Stakeholders Group) indicates that the total cost for FTTH throughout UK will cost $50bn. So how could someone argue against BT for carrying on with its own FTTC and VDSL tests.
On the other side of the canal FT holds the regulatory framework primary responsible for staying behind schedule on its fiber rollout plans.
BuddeCom provides a short overview of one of his recent reports on functional/structural separation. Two remarks are of relevant interest:
- The financial results of BT Openreach (which you may have seen in numerous presentations by BT or Ofcom):
Those who have worried that structural separation would lead to poorer shareholder returns have only to look again at BT’s figures: by March 2008 the company had 24 quarters of consecutive year-on-year growth in earnings per share: earnings per share grew moderately from 2002 (starting at nine pence per share) before jumping 26% in the first year of structural separation to reach about 24 pence per share in 2008. In addition, some £7.6 billion has been paid out to shareholders during the last five years.
- The comparison of different approach in terms of incumbent’s business and assets separation forms taken by UK (creation of BT Openreach), Sweden (creation of TeliaSonera Skanova Access, covering copper and fibre networks and multiplexing) and Netherlands decision that BT model was of limited relevance to the Dutch market although it contained the right to follow an analogous course of actions in the future. Well, and how about if someone argued that Greece have followed a somewhat more radical approach, compared to her European counterparts, towards the establishment of an independent physical infrastructure for Next Generation Access with the recently formulated strategy? Ok, it might cost a little extra but if governmental financial support is indeed required whatsoever, then Greeks might have saved a lot of debate time!
What a week!
No related posts.
