As the Telegraph reports this morning:
BT has rescued TalkTalk from administration in a £400m deal that raises competition concerns.
The FTSE 100 telecoms giant has announced a deal to take over the struggling broadband provider, which had been on the verge of collapse.
TalkTalk, which reported revenues of £1.2bn last year, serves 2.5 million customers.
Why is this relevant? There are several good reasons for noting it.
Firstly, competition in this sector is failing. A company with a significant turnover and a large customer base cannot survive. There is good reason for that. The supply of internet services in a country like the UK represents a natural monopoly because the duplication of the cabling required to get internet into most houses in this country cannot be achieved affordably, and so any veneer of competition is virtually meaningless.
Secondly, questions about the failure of competition do naturally arise as a result.
Thirdly, the old BT monopoly is reappearing.
Fourthly, as a matter of fact, current regulation is inappropriate. I recently renewed a contract with BT, and although they reduced my price to encourage me to sign again, the contract included what are likely to be above-average inflation price increases throughout its duration, and this is exploitative.
So my necessary response to what is happening is that something as critical to our national infrastructure as the supply of internet services should be under state control. To have it otherwise makes no sense at all. Thatcher got the privatisation of BT wrong.
The only question is, when will this be admitted, and when will regulation appropriate to the circumstances, which makes it apparent that there is no real competition and no room for exploitation, going to be introduced to lay the groundwork for renationalisation?
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Wires (fibre) vs service provision.
In the 1980s BT developed “blown fibre” which allowed fibre cables to be, literally, blown down a duct. The idea was to install fibre across the UK. Thatcher, the imbecile, quashed it. & fibre-based systems in the 1990s and 2000s made slow progress against assorted vested interests that wanted ADSL. There is a good argument to pull BT into public ownership, get a grip on its cost-structures and install fibre everywhere. The European Commission had a study that showed that, in the 1990s, had BT ripped out ALL of the twisted pair cables and replaced with fibre (& suitable terminals) – it would have made a profit, just FROM THE SALE OF THE COPPER. But no. Politics got in the way, as per.
In terms of how to operate the system – the Swedes since forever, have had publicly owned last-mile comms with service suppliers competing at the local switch for customers. Will the Brits learn from this? probably not. The politicos are far far too stupid/ignorant and vsted interests + the usual suits, will get in the way.
Much to agree with and thank you.
‘Would have loved to have seen you in person Mike recently – stay well, look after yourself.
Thank you and well said, Mike.
One can add how BT’s Prestel was not supported and became France’s Minitel and more and the patents for what became British Rail’s Class 43 HSTs were sold to Italy (and Russia and France) and BR Engineering left to wither. The grocer’s daughter certainly knew the price of everything.
And Badenoch is apparently cut from exactly the same cloth. As Richard’s blog on the Tories latest policy paper makes out.
Thanks for the kind comments. Yes would have liked to have been @ the event, foot said otherwise.
The cost of fibre. Buy some high quality bog paper, buy a single core of fibre – the price per metre is the same. (Source: European Commission circa 2012).
Yes bog paper costs the same as fibre. The provision of the same infra (fibre) is insane but reflective of the lack of grip the UK has on anything.
I’m tempted to call the politicos pig-ignorant – but would be to insult pigs – which are for the most part nice animals.
Back in the noughties in my DPI campaigning days, I helped with others to pay for counsel’s opinion on their non- consensual DPI shenanigans with websites such as mine, and got involved in lengthy communications with their then General Counsel. Their CEO at the time was one (Baroness)Dido Harding (of Jockey Club and Cheltenham racecourse/Covid fame and husband of John Penrose) after they split from Carphone Warehouse. What a can of worms that was. As for StalkStalk data breaches, the 300 word limit is against me.
Hearing that BT are taking them over produces in me, similar emotions to those that would be provoked on hearing that Ronnie Biggs had gone to live with the Kray twins.
I think I’ll stick with Zen.
I am also sticking with Zen, whom I have used for over twenty years now.
There needs to be a clear distinction between the physical infrastructure which, like electricity, should not be needlessly duplicated (there will shortly be two competing suppliers of physical fibre connections in my road), and ISP services, for which different users may have very different requirements – my connection to Zen has provided me with facilities which Virgin would never dream of offering, without bombarding me with offers of things I am simply not interested in.
Paul
What is this ‘Zen’?
It sounds OK – we wants it!
BT are getting on my nerves.
An internet service provider.
BT (or rather Openreach) have only just finished running fibre along my street, a full year to 18 months after three (count them, three: Trooli, Gigaclear, and CityFibre) companies each caused similar disruption installing their own fibre ducts, or in one case, erecting that traditional 19th century technology, telegraph poles!
BT were thus too late to retain my business, because I had already switched from their subsidiary Plusnet to Zen, because Plusnet couldn’t offer me a full fibre connection.
I can’t speak highly enough of Zen. They’re not the cheapest, and so won’t appeal to a large proportion of the populace who will always go for the least costly option irrespective of service quality etc.
“There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man’s lawful prey.”
Have a look at Aquiss as well. Not cheap but good small company. I moved from Zen to them paying same price but doubling DL speed to a frankly pointless number.
Tell me why I am not surprised by this?
We’ve had perfectly good pavements and roads dug up and made ugly and dangerous for privatization and we have ended with a monopoly-like situation any way.
So what was all that all about eh?
I’ll tell you: it was about transferring assets to the private sector where a lot Thatcher’s minsters came from. And the City – setting up the buyout-loans – well, they’d never had it so good had they?
Don’t you find all a bit ‘hollow’?
I do…………………..
It doesn’t matter though – especially to the 9 million suckers who apparently tuned into celebrity Traitors on BBC.
I am pleased to say I have never watched Traitors and never will.
Totally agree with you about the idiocy of Thatcher’s privatization PSR, but l’d like to point out that those of us who watch shows like Traitors and Strictly are not necessarily guillible fools who take no interest in, or have any knowledge of, “serious” issues like climate change, or who runs essential utilities.
The left doesn’t do itself any favours when it shows what appears to be snobbish contempt for the public who watch shows like this.
Sickoftaxdodgers
I’m not ‘left’. Is that understood, because too many of them don’t know what’s going on either?
And why watch a contrived TV program about being traitorous, when traitors are operating against us every where anyway? They’re our MPs, ministers, heads of civil service, the BoE, leaders of industry and the City. All selling us off behind our backs, and demeaning democracy And now what undoes us is sold as entertainment?! It’s soma for the masses SoTD, I mean look at the headlines……………
As for any further comment from me, least said is best mended.
Steady there, PSR…..
Oh!! how I laughed in 2013 (or so) and dismissed the ludicrous statements of “Paul Nuttall and UKIP”.
How could fok possibly go along with that? Laughter/dismissal by “chattering classes” was used to galvanise UKIP support. We know what followed.
PSR, you have previously stated your understanding of why many in our society are driven away from the LINO parties. I believe you are right.
I’m reminded of someone defending another accused of pissing away a (small) windfall (on a night out) …. A tory minister was on the woman’s case. An articulate sympathiser said (something like) : “[if You’ve got nothing, no prospect of something, and no other resources, why wouldn’t you grab some respite in some form]”.
So: is Traitors Tosh? – possibly. Is it fun/engaging and an opportunity for folks to talk about stuff – absolutely. Is it the opium of the people – possibly. Is it toxic – probably not! Is it enriching – probably only in the discussions it facilitates (it’s not deep).
In the spirit of engagement (purpose of last weekend in Ely?) – let’s get Hannah Fry or Martin Sheen (they’re on Traitors, got a huge following as folk that are smart, and not supporters of the consequences of neoliberalism) engaged with explaining MMT to the country?
Btw … I normally like your comments. I just don’t think we should blame many folks for their response to where they are at. Patronising to think this perhaps: I think we need to provide an alternative to the messages of brutal confrontation or disengagement / escapism that many are subject to. The mainstream certainly isn’t.
Thanks ex teacher. PSR, lighten up, nobody thinks Traitors is anything other than a game. I wouldn’t mind going on it myself, as long as i was guaranteed to be a traitor (would be totally clueless as a faithful).It’s good for the mind to sometimes relax and get stuck into something that isn’t that serious. I agree there’s a lot to be pissed off about today, but if you think about it non stop you’ll drive yourself mad. In one sense l know where you‘re coming from, despising mass entertainment as ‘the opium of the masses’; coming from quite an intellectual household myself , l used to despise football fans for their apparent obsession with their blasted teams, but I think now that’s mostly not justified. After all, Richard is a long time supporter of Ipswich Town FC. And he’s not ignorant of, well, anything very much.
Ex teacher….Martin Sheen?
Let’s calm this.
I agree we need relaxation.
I also think a great deal of television is toxic neoliberal promotion of consumption activity, and I will not watch much of it as a result.
But that is my choice. I just think it should carry a health warning.
There is another reason to put telecoms back in the public sector – Defence & Security
Just look at WW2 and the massive contribution made to the Battle of Britain by – telephones and of course the Post Office staff who kept the system running despite war damage.
In the same way the first ‘offensive’ action by the UK in WW1 wasnt by the Army or the Navy but by the dear old GPO when CS Alert cut the German cables running through the Straits of Dover.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CS_Alert_(1890)
The ‘Nationalised’ Telecoms network was designed to be able to deal with ‘War Damage’ in a way that the current privatised network is not and we need to get that ethos back, this time not to deal with ‘war’ but other forms of hostile action and of course ‘climate’ such as flood and fire
Much to agree with
Is it worth pointing out that Internet Protocol (IP, which underpins almost all internet traffic) was designed, by DARPA in the USA, to be a protocol that continued working even in the event of damage from nuclear war? Now, of course, the system can’t cope when the local, single, connection to the consumer is damaged, but otherwise it should, in principle, be able to deal with damage and automatically re-route signals. Whether the system, which has been bowdlerised to cope with video streaming, is still resilient is probably an open question but, in principle, the capability is there.
Duplicating cabling, digging up the same road multiple times is madness.
Australia went down a similar route as the UK with the formerly government owned Telstra company (our BT) being privatised in past decades. We now have the NBN (National Broadband Network) which is a government owned company that provides the digital backbone as a monopoly and sells wholesale capacity to commercial service providers. It’s charter requires coverage in remote areas that a commercial provider would not find viable.
Setting up the NBN as the monopoly provider has required complicated and costly deals with Telstra who owned much of the infrastructure which the NBN uses. Telstra is now best known as the largest mobile phone provider.
Thank you
Nationalising web access would be good, but I’d prefer the more radical step of recreating a nationally owned postal and telecoms service. I don’t understand why having several parcel delivery services is thought to be more satisfactory than a unified system with recognisable and properly paid staff.
Yes, it would make sense to have a nationally owned postal service as well as telecoms for the reasons Christopher Pipe says … in addition to the fact that we need to stop using fossil fuels as much as possible – as soon as possible.
Come to think of it, to save fuel, we could introduce progressively lower speed limits.
We could include a tax element for the weight of vehicles.
We could create a British company to mass-produce standard small inexpensive low-speed vehicles adequate to get the children to school, manage most journeys to and from work and deal with most of the shopping.
We could discourage energy use for home heating by charging progressively more for larger homes (taking extra homes into account as well).
We could begin to take climate change seriously … as though it is the murderous threat to our children that it is … and is to many Nepalese adults as well as children already.
Much to agree with
One could +/- decarb the entirety of parcel delivery in the UK…….Red Star. Put parcel depots at all rail stations that are manned (as in the 1980s). Option of delivery to home (and collection from home/office) or personal delivery to depot/collection from same. 24hr service by (existing) train to any other Red Star depot and local deliver/collection using… elec vehicles. Ensure that the totality of the work force is unionised, no zero hour contracts etc etc. It was the case in the 1980s, it could be the case now. Most of the current parcel delivery services would go out of business. At which point one could start to focus on Amazon and its erm “employment” practises. All doable, most of the infra now in place. Won’t happen, cos we have a dumb gov led by Burnt-ham.
I’d use it.
And the older vehicles capable of conversion for parcel use existt.
The platforms may not, though.
What is bigger cause for concern is the corporate takeover of the internet by mostly American tech giants. Around 25 years the internet was decentralised. In more recent years it has become increasingly dominated by Facebook, X, Google, TikTok etc. Independent discussion forums and blogs have severely declined in the face of centralised social media, and many once prominent examples have closed down. Fewer people are building their own websites and are choosing Facebook pages instead.
Sometimes I think it verges on pointless to nationalise web infrastructure for an internet dominated by American tech giants which the UK government has little power over and cannot nationalise.
The internet is about a little more than Facebook, I suggest.
Our web infrastrucutre is even more important now that Open Reach are about to completely close down he copper cable network.
No electricity now means no wifi and no landline phones.
I never recall being asked if I am ok with this – and I’m not!!
Ok, I needed to keep an old handset that did not need electricitrty.
But at least we could communicate.
In difficult times communication is vital and now will be much worse than during the war during elecricity cuts.
Was it worth the reclaimed cost of the copper? I’d love to see the Open Reach figures!
Much to agree with
TalkTalk sold off it’s Fibre Broadband business in 2020 to City Fibre and became a privately owned company in a £1.1 billion deal with a London based UK Hedge Fund in 2021 since which it has been just another Internet Service Provider selling broadband packages in a very tough market.
The fibre infrastructure in the UK is wholly dominated by Openreach with ISPs including BT simply sell their broadband services on top of this infrastructure with other companies selling dedicated gigabit fibre connections to industry and companies etc.
Virgin Media sells “fibre broadband” to consumers in their city catchment areas which uses DOCSIS based on the coaxial cable TV infrastructure that the US based cable companies such as Telewest installed in larger urban areas in the 1990s but are moving to full-fibre connections (XGS-PON) for newer services like their Gig2 tier.
Openreach should not remain part of BT, should be nationalised and given the remit to build and manage the UK’s fibre infrastructure.
Our son lives in an area that has that sort of “legacy” connection using the old coax type connections. The whole area had a prototype local TV setup run by Rediffusion going all the way back to the time the estates were built. His house still has a covenant on it to allow access to Rediffusion engineers. Through various sell-offs and mergers, the service is now owned by Virgin Media and provides very very high speed internet (>500Mb/s) even though the cabling is decades old. In the last year the whole area was dug up for Openreach to install fibre. I asked the guy digging up the road why they bothering and he just said “some people just like the choice”. I suppose they do now have the choice of two genuinely distinct infrastructure providers but nobody seems to have bothered switching.
Crazy!
I’ve heard tales of a mad jam-making man who promised us a national public fibre network. It was a mirth inducing fairy story of modern times, and oh how they laughed.
@PSR
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2026/10/05/its-time-to-nationalise-our-web-infrastructure/#comment-1095399
Zen – https://www.zen.co.uk/
If you want a testimonial, ask for my contact details. I’ve been with them for >8 years. BTOpenreach still handle the fibreoptic cable though.
BT and TalkTalk, eh? What could possibly go wrong?
“What could possibly go wrong?
https://breachhistory.com/blog/talktalk-data-breaches-full-timeline-through-2026
and
https://breachhistory.com/bt
and
https://www.theregister.com/networks/2026/09/16/bt-email-users-hit-by-barrage-of-unsolicited-password-reset-pins/5296616
and historically,
https://www.standard.co.uk/business/business-news/yahoo-hacking-scandal-bt-investigating-whether-its-customers-may-be-affected-by-statesponsored-hacking-a3352396.html
and
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2014/03/security-concerns-bts-uk-email-service-trigger-ico-investigation.html
Quite a lot! As the song goes, “Ah rrememberr it well!”.
Maybe at the same time, they could nationalise the mobile phone masts. At the moment, we have 3 main things to think about. Will my phone have any reception, cost and customer service. If the state took control of the masts and rented them out to the providers, we could get total UK coverage. The phone companies would then have to fight it out over cost and customer service. In my mind, this would be a big win for us, the users.
I have been with TalkTalk for several years and when I’ve had a problem Openreach come and fix.
The question of whether all essential services should be taken out of the private sector is for me a no brainer. The consequent question is how would you structure public services to prevent each service relapsing into complacency and being responsive to local variations of need and tradition. There is also the question of how we assess ‘progress’ in each sector and introducing the idea that not all change is necessarily good or helpful overall. These – and other questions – should be the focus of a more enlightened return to public services if we are not to create an on-again, off-again carousel of political fancy.