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There's something really interesting happing in the UK at the moment. We are awash with PE funded FTTP (fiber to the premises) startups, in my town there're tw

There's something really interesting happing in the UK at the moment. We are awash with PE funded FTTP (fiber to the premises) startups, in my town there're two pulling their fibre through the BT ducts and putting small boxes on the top of telegraph polls. We can now get 1gb finer for under £40/month. It's basically a repeat of the 90s / early 00s, their exit strategy is clearly for a larger player to build a conglomerate out of all of them, just as happed with [lost of small cable tv companies] -> NTL & Telewest -> Virgin Media. I assume CommunityFibre is one of these PE funded startups, the larger their user base the larger the exit for the funders.

globular-toast 4y ago
So private companies get to freeload the ducting and telegraph poles that were funded by the public? Are they even going to contribute to maintenance? What happens when the ducts fill up? This sounds corrupt as hell.
- matthewmacleod 4y ago
  No, it’s way more complex than that. In the UK, the public phone network was privatised in the 80s and 90s; the assets are owned by the private company Openreach, with various regulatory requirements to provide access to the network to third-party operators. Providing access to that network is a chargeable service. So yes, third-party operators contribute to installation and maintenance cost.
traceroute66 4y ago
> I assume CommunityFibre is one of these PE funded startups IIRC their startup money came out of the Railways Pension Fund, however the pension fund subsequently sold out to PE, so yes, at this point in time you are correct. ;-)